On December 10-11th, NCSL welcomed Todd Beane of the TOVO Institute for a thought-provoking coaching course examined the limitations of soccer training, introduce a new paradigm for talent development, and provide practical and research-inforced ideas/concepts for developing intelligent footballers. 

Day #1

The day started with Todd working with the McLean 03 players on the field and introducing coaches to the TOVO methodology. Beginning with rondos, he started coaching and demanding execution of key technical and tactical habits critical to success in the positional game. While Todd progressed the session by moving into larger-sided positional games, he continually coaches and reinforced the presence of rondos within the game structure.

After the field session, coaches moved to the classroom. Todd lead coaches through a valuable exercise to tease out each coach's values and motivations for coaching and what key traits they wanted to embed in their players. Based on their responses, he challenged coaches to reflect on how their own behavior and training sessions moved them towards or away from those ideals.

After the classroom session, Todd was very gracious to spend extra time to answer any individual questions. He had a late night, discussing various topics until almost midnight!

Day #2

Similar to the first day, Todd began with a field session with a mixed 2005 group from Alexandria Soccer and Villareal Virginia. He picked up where he left off from the day before, digging deeper into the rondo and positional game structures and speaking to coaches in-depth about some of the nuances. He progressed to a dynamic training game, which placed players in equal numbers situations to goal. 

Following the field session, coaches moved to the classroom. Todd presented compelling research behind the TOVO methodology, which challenges previously-held assumptions about player development. He outlined how the core activities help build pattern recognition, which creates players who can recognize game situations quickly and make the correct decisions more often (i.e. game intelligence).

Overall, we received a great deal of positive feedback from the event. We'd like to thank Todd for coming to join us, The St. James for hosting us at their fantastic facility, and the coaches who came to expand their knowledge and hone their craft!