Remaking Mass Youth Soccer - An Interview with Mike Singleton

Mike Singleton is happy to be home. The Beverly native has coached in Delaware, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Illinois since hanging up the cleats and picking up the clipboard. Now he’s Director of Coaching in his home state and looking for ways to push Massachusetts’ youth up into the elite levels of American soccer. It’s not a small job.

“I’ve been extremely busy,” he laughs when asked about his first months at work, “especially the last couple of months with all the coaching courses we’re doing. But we’re just getting done with ODP tryouts and coaching for the season is starting to slow down, so I still have my feet under me and that’s a good sign.”

Singleton has hit the ground running, meeting coaches from one end of the state to the other and making plans for the fall and winter. He’s even found that not everything was quite as he expected moving east from Chicago.

“I’m surprised at how massive the coaching education program is,” he begins. “Dean (Conway) did a fantastic job of building it up over the years. It’s amazing how many coaches we actually seek out through the courses every year.”

But perhaps a bigger and less pleasant shock came when Singleton attended State Cup and Regional matches. “I wrote a report out,” he explains, “for the midsummer after evaluating play at MTOC and State Cup and Regionals. Unfortunately, part of my surprise is that the level of play is not as high as I think it should be. I don’t think it’s at a level that’s respectable. We did a tracing of our results with our more competitive teams, through regional play, and in the past years we’ve progressively done worse and worse every year at the regional level. And when I looked at the State Cups, it was obvious that there are a lot of different reasons.”

The biggest reason, in Singleton’s view, is that we’re too stretched out. “We have supposedly 120 ‘premier clubs,’” he says, “and that’s impossible. I’m not sure we have enough coaches to cover 120 premier teams, much less 120 premier clubs. So the best players are spread out and not playing or practicing against quality competition. They’re not having to play at a high level all the time in order to succeed. Without being in an environment where they’re being challenged, at times playing against players who are better than them and being forced for every minute of every game, they’re not going to continually improve. They’re going to be able to take breaks. They’re going to be able to get away with bad habits playing with players who aren’t at their level.”

“And it’s not good for the next tier of players either,” he continues, “because they’re going to be competing against players who are too far above them, who they won’t be able to compete with and they won’t see the ball as much and won’t be able to develop their own skills and get better either. It’s amazing how spread out things are.”

Another problem Singleton has observed is the coach-to-win mentality of those in charge of our younger players. It’s an age group for whom all the experts agree technical development is far more important than wins and losses. “I see a lot of teams playing kickball,” says Singleton, “and there’s no thought when the players receive the ball. They’re initially thinking, ‘let me kick it up as far as I can, if there isn’t someone up there.’ We do have a great athleticism in the state, so we have great aggressiveness and competition as far as mentality goes, but we’re not teaching players to think and be creative and possess the ball and develop skills. That’s a bit alarming.”

Singleton and his coaching staff have already planned a number of programs to address these issues. First of all, they’ll be running a skills academy in the winter at seven sites around the state. The program will focus on the ’92 and ’93 age groups and focus exclusively on developing technical skills. Coaches will have access to the syllabus and will be able to shadow the coaches and question the instructors for free.

Specialty clinic offerings have been broadened and altered as well. Clinics will run two instead of three hours, and the price has been reduced to just $150 regardless of the number of coaches participating. Topics range from the basic to the more specialized content that appeals to MAPLE level clubs.

Another project in the works is a manual for clubs. Beginning with recommendations for mission statement and board structure, this 70 to 80 page text will also include a progressive educational curriculum to take kids from U-6 play up through U-18.

“With that,” says Singleton, “I’m also going to be suggesting to the towns and clubs that they look to hire a part-time director of coaching themselves. So I’m going to put a spreadsheet in there to show them how to do that without raising membership fees. Then they have someone on-site within the club that is both qualified and can make sure they’re not being misguided, that there is a development and yearly progression that these people can look at and go through long term.”

The last major initiative taking shape is a free U-6 coaching program open to any community that organizes kids that young. “The goal there is not only to get it going right at the younger ages,” Singleton explains, “but also to have parents education happen, because one of our big goals is to talk to parents and let them know what is appropriate at 8, at 10, at 12 and as we go up through the ranks. They can have a better understanding of what they should be expecting and what is a fair level for their children.”

If all this sounds ambitious, that’s because it is, and MYS is currently searching for another full-time development coach to join Singleton’s staff.

Read Singleton's Thoughts on the Need to Change Massachusetts' Soccer Culture.

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