Since 1963, Electro-Mech has been a proud part of the Wrightsville, GA community. Our journey from humble beginnings to becoming a nationwide leader in scoreboard manufacturing is rooted in a small-town common sense approach. We’ve built a reputation for stability, service, and simplicity that reflects in every scoreboard we create. At Electro-Mech, we believe in promoting the character-building aspects of athletic competition, where discipline, dedication, respect, and hard work are key to putting points on the board. We take pride in knowing that, in a subtle way, we contribute to bringing out the good sport in everyone.
Best Youth Soccer Drills; Learning Skills and Having Fun
While these soccer drill games may be listed as ‘just for fun’, they are indeed enhancing skills, awareness and dexterity. In some cases, the games are focused on individual performance, and in other cases there is a team effort. In all situations, there is a learning process that help the kids in their performance.
P-I-G; Ages 10-14; one of the most fun
Variations for challenges may include a start off where the ball may hit the ground once. For advanced players, require a head ball or full volley.
Get all of your players to form a circle. Players will half volley/juggle the ball back and forth to each other. If a player makes a bad volley or serve, he gets a letter ‘P’. Start the game again. If the player makes another error, he receives the letter ‘I’, and now has “PI”. Continue reading “Best Youth Soccer Drills; Learning Skills and Having Fun”
Best Youth Soccer Drills; Attacking/Defending
There are variations in these soccer drill games to enable players to perform from both a defense and offense position.
Corner Kick Game; Ages 8-14
This game can be played with 6 v 6 or 8 v 8; with just a bunch of soccer balls places at the opposite corners.
When a team kicks a ball out of bounds relating to any line, the other team is given a corner kick.
This creates a situation where the players simply run and run.
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Best Youth Soccer Drills; Shooting
Shooting drill practice is an excellent way to broaden dexterity and awareness skills. Since the games are designed to be fun and work in a team environment, they also bring a heightened attitude towards team comradery. Coaches can adjust the speed, field length and other levels to make this more challenging for the older kids, thereby making a shooting drill game more fun.
Breakaway shooting game; Ages 6-14
Using a series of cones, each player has to dribble the soccer ball to a cone and shoot before he gets to the next cone. If the next player saves the ball, he keeps the ball and runs to the end of his team’s line. If the 1st players shot is wide, the 2nd player gets the ball and goes to the end of the line for his team. After the 1st player shoots, he becomes the goalie.
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Best Youth Soccer Drills; Dribbling – Part 2
1 v 1 Dribbling Through the Gate; Ages 6-14
Use a large field and set up a lot of ‘cone gates’ which are about one yard apart. Pair up the players with one of the two possessing the soccer ball.
When the coach blows the whistle, player will try to dribble the soccer ball through as many of the ‘gates’ as possible and the other player will at the same time, be trying to steal the ball. Time= 30-60 seconds. The player with the ball cannot go through the same gate two times in a row. One point is given for each gate. If the other player steals the ball, he gives it back to attacker. When the time is up, each player will switch positions. The one with the most points wins. This is a great dribbling drill that is a lot of fun.
Continue reading “Best Youth Soccer Drills; Dribbling – Part 2”
Best Youth Soccer Drills; Dribbling – Part 1
Musical Chairs; dribbling drill and fitness; Ages 8-12
Variations on this dribbling drill can include adding different moves and varying the size of the circles. These changes will enhance their fitness levels.
Create one small circular grid and one large circular grid.
Players will have their own soccer ball and will dribble around the small large grid at a decent pace, avoiding each other and maintaining a heads up position. After they have been dribbling for a specified amount of time, call out the word ‘Switch’. When the word is called out, each player must stop their ball, leave it where it is located and run around a cone in the outer circle, then run back into the small circle to a new/different soccer ball. It’s important that this is done quickly and that they go to a completely different soccer ball. The players will then continue dribbling.
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Best Youth Soccer Drills; Passing – Part 3
Passing through the gates: Technique development; ages 6-12
Variations on this passing drill can include adjusting the size of the gates; larger or smaller as well as the distance between the two players.
Using cones, create gates about three yards apart from each other. Split the group into pairs.
Each of the players will take a turn trying to pass the soccer ball in between the gates. Points are scored each time the ball actually goes through the gates without touching any of the cones. Each play should be from three to four minutes.
Continue reading “Best Youth Soccer Drills; Passing – Part 3”
Best Youth Soccer Drills; Passing – Part 2
Soccer passing drills and exercises are a great way to develop agility, movement, decision making and team attitudes. When coaching and working with kids of all ages, there are methodologies of combing skill development with fun while getting their passing down to a science.
Four Corners; Ages 10-14
Make four grids of approximately 5 ft x 5 ft each and about 40 yds apart from each other. There is no ‘out of bounds’ section allocated. There will be two teams, each of from 4-8 players. Variations on this passing drill can include the pass must be a give and go to a team mate player. Continue reading “Best Youth Soccer Drills; Passing – Part 2”
Best Youth Soccer Drills; Passing – Part 1
The Bank Bank: Passing drill with Pressure; Ages 10-14
Set the game up with two teams, each with 4 to 5 players on an approximate 40×40 grid. You can change the variations on this by sending more than 1 defender in, making the grid smaller or, to have an easier game make the grid a larger size and add an offensive player
Coach projects the soccer balls in team X’s grid. The opposing team will send 1 player to play as a defender. Team X will try to connect four passes in a row without the defender kicking the ball out of bounds or stealing. Continue reading “Best Youth Soccer Drills; Passing – Part 1”
Football Coaching and Development by Age
Developing excellence in a young football player is a fine art. Each age brings its own challenges and hurtles, but the approach, patience and guidance should be focused on the age of the potential team player. Children are still in the development of their physical bodies and should be given tasks that they can achieve within their age groups. The variances and approach are called ‘Introduction’ (ages 6-8), ‘Foundation’ (ages 9-13) and ‘Refinement’ (ages 14-16). Each level brings a difference in learning, growing and philosophy for young football coaching. Continue reading “Football Coaching and Development by Age”
Practice Segment Timers Bring Benefits to Sports Training
The key to any winning team is always involved in practice to perfection. One of the major challenges of all practice sessions is to actually have a measurement of progress. Today’s technologies bring new and easy methods to gauge the level of success through Practice Segment Timers. Timers allow you to set your own goals, focus on the areas and team players that may need improvement and see the results.
Electronic timers have come a long way from the days of a stop watch or if you attended a game in the past, you might have viewed the old stop clock at the stadium. The manually observed and activated stop watches used in the past have been replaced with high tech quartz clocks that bring automation and precision to your sports training sessions. The digital electronics are self-contained, can be preset and changed on a whim through programmable logic software.
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Top 10 Funny Outdoor Billboards
Advertising is an art and if a marketing guru is also creative, they can reach beyond the boundaries of the mundane and boring and design an ad that will be remembered for a long time (or at least a few months). As a society, we associate commercials as a bad experience, only comparable to going to the dentist. For outdoor billboards, you have the added disadvantage that these are typically viewed in the seven seconds someone is driving buy. This means the advertisement has to be noticeable, creative, potentially funny and grab the attention, in 7 seconds.
Here are some very creative outdoor billboard ads that could be award winners:
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North Korea Develops their Own Odd Game of Basketball
North Korea is a mystery to most of the world. Their exclusionist attitude, the brain washing of the people, and their lack of association with anything that the rest of the world is involved with, has kept most people scratching their heads as to who they really are. The rather strange visit of Dennis Rodman to North Korea, along with his own bizarre behavior, has had an effect on North Korea when it comes to the topic of basketball. It appears, that the ‘dear leader’ (Kim Jong-Il) also loves basketball, but in his typical methodology, has created his own rules for the game.
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How did Baseball Become America’s Favorite Sport?
It’s understood that apple pie and American baseball are two of our iconic claims to fame as a culture. Baseball is played in every town, city, school and open field in our country and we have established a complete set of traditions that blend with the sport. With so many sports choices and excellent players and teams in the U.S., how did baseball take the top spot as the favorite?
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When Sports Cheerleading Goes Wrong
The topic of sports injuries has been escalating over the last number of years, specifically due to the long term major head injury problems that football players experience. It is odd that a focus was never placed on sports injuries in the past, when we had lower technology sports protection gear. Cheerleading doesn’t have protective sports equipment, so when there is an injury, it can be pretty severe.
1982-1983 introduced a study by the NCCSIR (The National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research), covering both collegiate and high school sports injuries. Strangely, cheerleading was not included in that study, until there were two severe head injuries suffered by cheerleaders that just so happened in the same year as the study.
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