This week's exercises are from our latest book, Coaching a Team to a National Championship
Shooting technique was really important to us. If we were going to have the ball around the goal a lot and get lots of shooting chances in games, then being able to shoot with power and accurately was important. So I used to set up lots of different shooting exercises...all to goal...that had various shooting angles, distance and other techniques like turns, fakes, etc. involved.
With all these drills, the main focus was on improving the shooting technique and twisting the hips to hit the ball across the goal to the far post. I had noticed that with youth players in general and girls more so than boys, that when in wide shooting positions, players would generally end up shooting to the near post because they didn't twist their hips to get the ball to the far post.
Another thing I used to add to our shooting to goal setups was a cone about 3 feet outside the far post. This was used as a guide to encourage them to really try and hit the ball to the far post. We would keep score like the following.
- 5 points for a shot that was hard and low hitting the far post side netting without touching the ground
- 4 points for a shot that was hard and low and was wide of the far post but inside the cone
- 3 points for a shot that was hard and low in the middle of the goal
- 2 points for a shot that was high in the goal at the far post
- 1 point for a shot that was high and just wide of the far post
- 0 points for any shot over the crossbar or in the near side of the goal
The basis for this point system was that for each shot, they were aiming to hit it hard and low to the far post. So they would get points if they just missed it wide. But if they hit the shot high and at the near post area, even if it scored, it wasn't close to where they were aiming so they got fewer points.
These shooting drills and points systems really made a difference to the quality of our shooting.
