Is Your Soccer Team Making a Difference in the World?

What I have found in my 20 plus years of coaching soccer players is that they are a very giving group of individuals. This is true about the players, their parents and the coaches.

I think one of the reasons for this generosity trait is soccer is such a team oriented sport. While there might be some "go to" players on the field, for the most part games are won or lost because of team play. So players understand the notion of sharing, whether it is the ball or the spotlight or their time, it is just the right thing to do.

With all that said unfortunately, I don't see as many teams trying to make a difference in the world. I don't know if that is the case because they don't think they can make a difference or what the reasons are, but I want to tell you that you can make a difference and i would hope teams would consider doing something annually to help others.

Just recently one of my teams (high school age girls) took it upon themselves to do a community service project. They decided to raise money for a charity. The team formed committee's under the guidance of some parent assistance and the players decided on what charity we would raise money for (Make-A-Wish) and what needed to get done and who was going to do it.

They ended up dribbling a soccer ball around their schools track and had companies and individuals sponsor them. Each player dribbled one mile and them passed onto a teammate who then did their mile of dribbling and so forth until 50 miles later it ended!

When all of the donations were added up, and donations included sponsors, food sold the day of the event and games that were being played while the dribbling was going on the total amount raised exceeded $14,000!

Needless to say the girls were excited because they had raised enough money to grant the wishes of three very special young people.

As you can imagine, the girls learned many skills outside of soccer that day, and made a difference in the world.

I hope you have a great day!

Gary Christopher
http://www.soccerandspeedcoach.com/

PS. If you are looking for interesting ways of getting new ideas on training your soccer team or yourself as a soccer player, please go over to my website, http://www.soccerandspeedcoach.com/ today and register to receive my soccer and speed insights sent to you each week for free.