My name is Erick Hilbert and I am the Technical Director of Soccer at Noblesville United Soccer Club (NUSC) (Noblesville, IN). NUSC is a 99% volunteer recreational club serving players from 4 to adults. It was home to over 1400 youth participants and 160+ volunteer coaches this past fall. NUSC is governed by a volunteer board and is a member of Indiana Soccer. I am a part-time employee and have been in my role for the past 3 years.
This past spring I learned that Indiana Soccer was planning to host a C License course starting in the summer. I asked the NUSC board if they would be willing to pay for my participation in the license course as part of a contract renewal conversation. The board agreed and I signed up.
Entering a new license course is always exciting and a bit intimidating. I was intimidated by the amount of work, weekly meetings, and simply being around other coaches. The Coach Educators (including Steve Franklin) set a warm and inviting tone. They encouraged us to share our experiences and challenged us to always put the player at the center of all we do. They also outlined what we would gain and the resources most important to our learning. They set us up for success!
The course taught me to better read the game, track meaningful data, and align deficient areas of the team’s game with the US Soccer Player Development Framework. We dove deep into aligning our training sessions to meet the desired objective identified in the game as well as considering the player’s health and fitness in our plan. Finally, we recorded ourselves coaching our training to determine how we can better communicate, train, and encourage player development.
The best parts of the course were the four-day on-site training and our small community of practice groups. The onsite days were spent working together in groups to analyze videos to identify issues, create practice plans to address the issue, discuss our experiences, and build camaraderie. We capped off these days by running training for a variety of players and helping our fellow coaches improve by taking on various roles.
Each of us was tasked with leading a community of practice discussion with our assigned small group. This allowed us to touch on topics such as developing character, technical skills, setting goals, and creating a sense of belonging. Frequently our 45-minute session would extend to 75 minutes or more as we shared and discussed ideas in our small groups. The camaraderie developed through the course has allowed me to connect with coaches all over the US coaching in all types of environments and learn from them.
I am thankful that NUSC values US Soccer licensing and I can’t express how impactful it has been on me throughout my coaching career. I am constantly looking to not only apply what I have learned for myself but to also help the coaches I work with to benefit from the knowledge. This is why at NUSC we have a program that pays all our coaches US Soccer coaching licenses costs up to the D license when taken through Indiana Soccer. NUSC knows the benefits of coaches being able to speak the same language and have the same goals. Indiana Soccer and US Coaching Licenses help us to do both!
In closing, I highly recommend all coaches take the time to earn their US Soccer coaching licenses and to make sure they complete at least one of their grassroots licenses face-to-face to begin networking with other coaches. Earning your licenses not only improves your knowledge, skills, and abilities, it also helps you to become more engaged with the soccer community across Indiana. The more we can improve ourselves, the more we can pour into the player!
