San Francisco Vikings Soccer Club

At San Francisco Vikings Soccer Camp, players are introduced to a wide variety of soccer games, soccer-like games and play-based games.

 

As director of the camp I hire a staff that is particularly good with 5, 6 and 7-years-olds. Coaches who work well with 10, 11 and 12-years-olds may not necessarily be good at coaching the younger players. What works with 10 to 12-year-olds doesn't necessarily work with 5 to 7-year-olds. I have found in my experience that good coaches of the youngest playing age group are harder the find. They are generally young (high school, college age or just out of college) and newly licensed but not always.

 

Coaches of the older age groups are usually more experienced, have higher coaching licenses and are excellent teachers of soccer techniques and tactics.

 

Of course, the game of soccer itself is what we focus on at camp, especially with the older age groups. But we also do a lot of functional movement training through play-based games (obstacles course, hopscotch, tag games, etc.) that are sometimes soccer-like and sometime aren't. The goal of these games is to increase strength, speed and agility, to reduce injuries and to develop players for the long-term. This functional training improves performance on the field.

 

Below is an example of a game that is played at the camp primarily by the 5, 6 and 7-year-olds.

 

 

Below is an example of a game played by 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 year olds.

 

 

Current research says that playing soccer, or any single physical activity for that matter, for 3 to 6 hours a day for 5 days consecutively is not necessarily a physically and emotionally good thing for children.

 

At Viking Camp, we add variety to better serve the children physically and psychologically, by offering schoolyard/physical education games and new types of play equipment to the camp. This allows the kids to have fun while also practicing valuable movement skills that will carry over to higher movement quality. It is our goal through this training to give kids an enjoyable experience while also being a valuable insurance policy against future injuries, to develop habits for lifelong physical activity, and make them better, more efficient athletes.