Grading U8s

[Capt. Awesome]

Hi peeps, my son is in the under 8s at Ourimbah this year and he will do grading for the first time. Just wondering whether any of you guys know how the do this this days and what sort of drills they will get the kids to do. What will they be looking for?

Cheers

 

[Capn Gus Bloodbeard]

Good luck to your son!
Been about 10 years since I was involved in U/8 football, so not sure what's changed now. If I remember correctly there were a few drills....players line up, pass it to the person looking after that group, that sort of thing. Honestly don't remember too much about that, then there may have been a small game afterwards.

Basic ball skills will quickly and easily separate the higher players from the lower players - can he control a ball, pass it straight, dribble without losing control, that sort of thing. Then distilling them into their grades was a bit tougher but looking for the other skills. General match skills, of course, and in the drills even little things like looking up as they're running, etc.

I know there's been massive changes to football structure since I was coaching, so I'm not sure if any of the above is relevant, but I figured I'd chime in just in case nobody else does

 

[Capt. Awesome]

Thanks for the advice

 

[Capt. Awesome]

Thanks for sharing your experiences Fruitbat. I have actually gone through similar experiences after I posted the for question.

My son was probably middle of the road talent wise at the start of the year. Our club did soft grading anyway so it didn't really matter this year. However as my son is quite short for his age and not the fastest player I was concerned he would get left behind talent wise this year. So I signed him up to the. Regional Development Pathway run by CCF at Soccer5s. He went from being mediocre to one of the best in his team and club and I've been told by our clubs Youth development coach that he will be in A grade next year. I think all kids should to year round clinics. Doing club training for 1 hour per week is not enough.

I'd like to hear more of people's experiences.

 

[style_cafe]

When I was running a junior club Our grading was fairly involved so as kids of the same ability played together.
It went something like this:-

Round one
Each player was given a number & put into a team.
Say 6 teams
Each player was then graded 1,2,or3 by at least 3 coaches in each game they played,
At the end of the session ( 3 x 20mins games per team) each player had his points tallied & divided by the number of coaches so they each had an average.

Round two
The players were placed into teams based on their average number from the previous grading
The teams were colour coded ie Red for the highest av, orange for the next & so on
They then played trial games again & were given scores as before

Final round
The players were once again divided as per round two
In this round closer scrutiny was given to the higher averaged players by the coaching co-ordinator
with a senior coach watching the lowest average players looking for the better players to move up
Junior coaches (less experienced) watched the rest

At the end of the third trials it only took about 20 mins to finalise the 6 teams without any player being named.
All done on a number system, with performance records kept which showed all the scores given.
If any parent complained about it being biased or unfair the coaching co-ordinator had all the information at his fingertips to dispel any arguments.
Once this policy was implemented our club grew from about 450 kids to 999 kids at our peak.

 

[MagpieMariner]

[SNIP] Some of the best players in the game are short. [SNIP]

Messi is only 5'7" (170cm for the youngsters )