CHICA CHATTER
President’s Note
Happy 40° February!
Farewell to the winter cold! I have enjoyed getting out during the winter to watch all of the teams train, but I admit that I am even more excited to once again take training outdoors with even warmer weather.
In January we conducted a coach’s meeting where we discussed all the training for the upcoming season. As part of our Coaching Education component, I taught on the importance of implementing our club-wide style of play and training methodology.
You’ll notice “principle number two” explained below and we will be transitioning that principle from words to action on the field. What does that look like for your player?
Making sure each player is developing and mastering the skills necessary for their specific age group. All skills build on the layer before much like a school system.
This approach is more conducive to the learning process of a soccer player. Additionally, this approach allows players to build confidence in a more natural way.
All teams will follow the same training structure, which includes:
WARMUP — developed for us by Therapeutic Associates physical therapist team;
TECHNICAL 10 — individual technical skills for ball mastery;
THE CHICAS WAY — our club’s unique training approach;
GAME PLAY — small-sided games and scrimmages;
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT — opportunity for reflection and positive takeaways from training.
The Indie Chicas 2006 are Playing in the Girls Academy League
The Indie Chicas 2006 team is doing something special this season; they are playing in the Girls Academy League – the leading youth soccer development platform for the best female soccer players in the United States.
The GA has a program that allows for non-member “discovery teams” to play under the uniform of a member club. Bridge City Academy in Portland, Oregon, a member of the GA, invited the Indie Chicas 2006 team to play under their uniform as a discovery team, giving us the opportunity to learn more about the GA, and giving our girls exposure to a higher level of play and more college recruiters.
In January, the Indie Chicas 2006 competed in their first showcase tournament in San Diego with a strong showing (2-1-0). We were contacted by eight college coaches, many of whom complemented us on our players, style of play, and creativity with the ball.
Over the next three months, the girls will be playing weekend tournaments in Portland and Seattle against the best teams in the Northwest. Go Chicas!
National Girls and Women in Sports Day
The National Girls & Women in Sports Day is on Feb 2, 2022, and we are stretching it into the month. We honor the power of sports to unlock her ability to achieve her goals. Ask your daughter if she would like to send us an email telling us why she loves sports and what sports do for her. Send your email to chatter@indiechicas.org. Be sure to include your daughter’s name and birth year. We will share our favorite entries next month.
The Chicas Way
Guiding Principle #2 - Recognize success in seeing our players master the skill set necessary for each age group.
As mentioned above, it is of critical importance that our players learn the techniques and tactics for their particular age group and feel comfortable and confident in their abilities before progressing to the next level.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure your daughter has the opportunity to learn and grow as a player alongside her teammates and receive coaching that is inclusive, positive, and challenging in order for her to continually develop her skills and knowledge of the game.
Of course we will have early and late developers throughout the year and our coaches will keep an eye out for these players in order for us to place or coach them appropriately based on their skill level.
The Chicas Way is an exciting style of play designed to keep your daughter developing, competing, growing, and having FUN while playing the game she loves.
The Confidence Problem
Tween and teen girls are experiencing a severe confidence shortage. Working with Ypulse, a polling firm that focuses on tweens and teens, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman surveyed 1300 girls between the ages of 8 to 18, and their parents. What they found confirms what girls are telling us: between the ages of 8 and 14, girls’ confidence levels nose-dive by 30 percent compared to boys.
As girls approach adolescence, openness to risk and failure becomes buried under an avalanche of biological and cultural signals telling them to be careful, seek perfection, and avoid risk at all possible costs. Parents and society reinforce a lot of these messages and behaviors at the same time that girls’ brains are being flooded with hormones, which heightens emotional intelligence and ability to read the emotional landscape around them, but also makes them more observant, more risk-averse, and less likely to TRY. This is a problem, not just in the game of soccer, but in life!
That is why we created The Confidence Club. We reached out to Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, the authors of “The Confidence Code for Girls.” They were so inspired by our mission, they donated their entire training curriculum to us. The Confidence Club is a four-part training program we will be offering every season to our girls ages 8 and above to make them aware of the confidence problem, and to give them the psychological tools they need to build their confidence through adolescence and the rest of their lives.
In our first meeting we worked on identifying fear, what scares us, and what we do to overcome our fear. And something wonderful happened. The older girls and younger girls started sharing their experiences and helping each other understand their common fears and find ways to build up each other’s confidence. Chicas helping Chicas be better people and better players. We are all about it! Don’t miss the next session on February, 17, 2022. Check your TeamSnap for times.
You can pick up the book The Confidence Code for Girls at Amazon. Be sure to use your Indie Chicas Smile account.
Share Your Favorite Photos
To share our story, we are looking for photos of Indie Chicas having fun and doing their thing on the field. If you have some favorite photos you would like to share, please send them to chatter@indiechicas.org.
Making TeamSnap Schedule Work for You
Are you constantly checking your TeamSnap Schedule to see upcoming club and team events? Did you know you can easily sync your TeamSnap Schedule to show up on your favorite Google or Apple calendar? Click to this page and select your operating system for instructions: Syncing TeamSnap Schedules to Calendars.
