“I don’t want to play,” four-year-old Maddie replied before staring at the grass.

Some battles just can’t be won.

After five days of the US Youth Soccer National Youth License course, my grade came down to running two activities with a group of six players in the U6 age group. Not exactly the most difficult challenge in a vacuum, but not a cakewalk when the kids have already gone through three other coaches on a warm afternoon in Southern California.

My Director of Coaching at Sol SC highly recommended the US Youth National Youth License course. She said it was the best course that she ever attended, which is a high selling point from a coach with an A License.

It didn’t take long to realize why she said that. There is a lot of information in the course that is incredibly valuable for teaching children. The National Youth License deals with Zone 1 in the player development pyramid, which is U6 to U12.

During the five-day course, there was a ton of information provided in the classroom and on the field about these age groups. There is analysis of cognitive abilities, physical attributes, and social development that is examined within each age group. And I’m barely touching on the surface level of how the course is explained.

The setup is relatively straightforward. Each age group receives individual attention within a specific day. The U6 age group goes first on Thursday with the basic characteristics of a six-year-old discussed in the classroom before a brief on the field session run by one of the instructors.

In the afternoon, the course attendees run a training session for that age group with the instructors looking on and one of the other students filming it. In the evening, we review the film from each other’s activities.

I tried to film one of my review sessions to share, but I wasn’t successful. Trust me that all of my practice sessions during the week were exemplary and used as the standard for future courses.

This will sound pretty standard for anyone who has taken a coaching course in the last five years. Outside of the classroom and practice field, there is a ton of homework as well – no reason to bore with the details there.

At the end of the day, it was a coaching course. The days bleed together and the exhaustion seeps into the proceedings rather quickly. There is beneficial information for the development of you as a coach, and there are parts of the course that you will disagree with at the core.

For all of the positives of the National Youth License, the lack of attention to the technique was one of the glaring inadequacies. There is some expectation that the players will be capable when they reach the U10 level, but there is not much in the way of teaching that competency from the U6 or U8 level.

There is also the giant elephant in the room about how a free market in U.S. soccer with compensation for player development would change the entire perception on how to teach and coach players for this age. It was briefly mentioned in the group dialogue, but never came across in the content.

Overlooking those elements, I took a lot of enjoyment out of the course and I understand why so many people speak so highly of it compared to the USSF coaching courses.

But, there was still little Maddie sitting on the grass on a Sunday afternoon in Carlsbad while I tried to run my final activity in front of the watchful eyes of one of my instructor.

The other five players dutifully trotted out onto the field and played some semblance of soccer in a rousing game of three against two. Meanwhile, the tutu-wearing Maddie attempted to tank my grade with the same free fall of a stone hitting the water.

Downtrodden but not defeated, I negotiated with the four-year-old to pass the ball with me while the rest of the group gleefully dribbled toward makeshift goals with the typical disregard of teamwork from a U6 player.

My nagging thoughts of how this would be perceived by the instructor over 20 yards away were put to rest minutes later when my designated 10-minute coaching period came to an end.

I won’t know for another eight weeks how my instructor scored my activities and if it meant a failing grade because a four-year-old quit on my practice.

It will be a long wait.

*Maddie was not her real name

** Thanks to the course instructors: John Madding, Carrie Taylor, and Sam Snow.

*** Special thanks to Carlsbad United F.C. and Bill Buelna for the work behind the scenes to make it a very well run course.