A youth coach’s playbookpractice plans, rules and a season parents can read

Method

1. 1

   Give your assistant the league’s rules and your notes

   Connect your assistant to know.sh once, following the support page. In Claude or ChatGPT, attach the league’s rulebook and safeguarding policy, and paste the schedule and your notes from the parents’ meeting. Ask it to make a shelf, Comets U10, fall 2026, and a document, League rules and match day, with a finding for each rule you will need on a Saturday: the 7v7 format, the size 4 ball, the build-out line, no heading, the playing-time rule, the concussion policy, the weather policy.

   Ask it to quote the rulebook’s section number in each finding. When the league’s rule and a national guideline differ, the league’s rule is the one you coach to.

2. 2

   Have it research and draft a season of practices

   Next, ask your assistant to research session plans for 9- and 10-year-olds on the web, from U.S. Soccer’s grassroots resources and your state association, and to draft a Practice plans document: one finding per practice, titled with the session number, the date and the theme, “Session 6, Thu 24 Sept — Turning away from pressure”.

   Each session follows the same parts, which U.S. Soccer’s Play-Practice-Play model fits: a warm-up game as players arrive, one or two activities on the theme, a small-sided game, a cool-down, and the equipment list. Each session lists the plan it was adapted from as a source. Sixteen sessions arrive in one evening. This needs an assistant with web search.

3. 3

   Fit each session to your field in the editor

   Now make the plans yours. Press Edit on a session and check it against what you have: half a field, twelve players if everyone comes, eight if it rains, one bag of balls. Shrink grids, cut the activity that needs three coaches, and swap the drill with lines for one where everyone has a ball. Any drill that has players heading the ball goes.

   Drag the sessions into the order that builds the season: dribbling before passing, passing before playing out from the back. Change a session’s type to Question if you are not sure it will work, and after practice add a line on what happened. The ones that worked get marked Key.

4. 4

   Plan positions and a fair rotation

   Ask your assistant for a Positions and rotation document: a finding explaining a simple 7v7 shape, such as two defenders, three midfielders and a forward, in words a nine-year-old can follow, then one finding per game with who plays each quarter. Use shirt numbers, never names; the list that matches numbers to children stays on paper in your bag.

   Then check the rotation against the league’s playing-time rule. Twelve players and seven places over four quarters means everyone plays at least two quarters, and every child gets a turn in goal if they want one. Revisions keep each version, so when a parent asks about playing time you can show what was planned.

5. 5

   Build the match-day checklist and quiz yourself

   Add a finding to League rules and match day called Match-day checklist and mark it Key: arrival forty minutes early, the first-aid kit and ice packs, the roster and medical release forms in the league’s folder, size 4 balls, pinnies, the rotation, and the concussion steps written out.

   A week before the first game, ask your assistant for a quiz on League rules and match day. It writes five to ten questions with know.sh’s quiz tools, each citing the rule it came from, and you take it in know.sh or the iOS app (in TestFlight beta). It comes back under Revisit in three, seven or twenty-one days, depending on how you did.

6. 6

   Write the parents’ guide and share it

   Ask your assistant to draft Parents’ guide — fall 2026 from the schedule and the rules: a finding for practice times and the field, one for game days, one for what to bring, one for how playing time works, one for the concussion policy, one for weather cancellations. Then rewrite the overview yourself: who you are, how to reach you through the league’s team app, and what the season is for.

   Read every finding for anything about a particular child, and take it out. Then press Share, copy the link as it appears, and send it through the league’s team app. Parents read it on their phones; they cannot reply on the page, so questions come to you the usual way.

7. 7

   Keep it up through the season

   After each practice, add a line to the session: what worked, what dragged, who needs more touches (by number). After each game, file anything that went wrong as a Problem in League rules and match day, and fix the rotation if a child missed time.

   When the schedule changes, edit the Parents’ guide; the same link shows the change, but nobody is told, so post a line in the team app too. In spring, ask your assistant to start Practice plans, spring 2027 from the sessions you marked Key.