Smart Points™
“Smart Points™ fosters a positive learning environment for all players and are achievable by all ages, genders, and abilities.”
Coastal Soccer’s Smart Points™ is an innovative reward system that motivates and instructs soccer players of all levels and abilities. Coastal seeks to reward soccer players who attempt to implement the skills and concepts that they learn in each training session.
As our trainers advance through the Skills & Concepts™ Curriculum in conjunction with Smart Points™, players become increasingly aware of their own progress as they realize their soccer potential.
Above all, Smart Points™ fosters a positive learning environment for all players and are achievable by all ages, genders, and abilities.
How Smart Points™ Work
Smart Points™ assign values to skills and concepts in our curriculum. Using Smart Points™, the topics we cover in each training session can be reinforced by coaches, trainers, and parents.
Uses & Benefits
Rewarding a wide Range of Behaviors. Coastal believes that scoring goals and winning games isn’t everything. Players can be proud of so much more. Therefore, the Coastal Soccer Smart Points™ system creatively rewards a vast range of player activities.
Typically, coaches, trainers, and parents revere the physical accomplishments of youth players i.e. fastest, strongest, highest jump, farthest throw, etc. Coastal chooses to recognize any moment of improvement and learning at any level.
Soccer Teaches Life-skills. In accordance with the Positive Coaching Alliance’s Double-Goal Coach® mission, we aim to use Smart Points™to reinforce both winning attitudes and valuable life-skills. A player can be rewarded Smart Points not only for good technique or goal scoring, but for excellent sportsmanship, hard work, discipline, following directions, and so forth. Therefore, players grow to understand that winning can mean much more than what appears on the scorecard.
Educating a New Generation. Smart Points™ reinforces one of Coastal’s four core values: Education. Coastal firmly believes in developing a player’s soccer knowledge. With Smart Points, kids become ‘smarter’ as they are given positive feedback for successful play and hard work.
A New Way to Elect a Captain. Smart Points™ provides a unique way to select a team captain; the player who tallies the most Smart Points™ during training will assume the captain’s role for the next game. This adds a new dimension to the phrase “MVP.” Not only does this process motivate players to succeed, but also transforms a difficult coaching decision into one of fairness and substance.
A Unique Learning Tool. Smart Points™ is a unique and fun instructional tool different from common scholastic assessments and teaching devices. Trainers and coaches can assign short and long-term goals and help bring measure to a player's soccer I.Q. without resorting to grades or tests.
A Way to Focus Training. While one of the benefits of Smart Points™ is to cover a wide range of behaviors, it can also be used to focus a training session. One method Coastal utilizes Smart Points™ is to gear a practice toward a specific group of activities; at the beginning of training – we assign points to the successful completion of three or four particular skills and concepts we cover in our curriculum. Creating these parameters prevents coaches from lecturing and over-coaching the player. Over time, as the player improves, he or she will have limitless opportunities to gain Smart Points™.
Positive. Encouraging. Motivating. Coastal looks to find ways to make players dedicated to self-improvement. In the beginning of a player’s soccer career, how they play the game will undoubtedly need correction. Smart Points™ help coaches and trainers to concentrate on what players are doing right. This maintains a positive learning environment during training sessions.
Reversing Bad Habits. Smart Points™ also encourages coaches and trainers to correct, and prevent the formation of bad habits. Thus, when a player uses improper technique (i.e. toe kicking), he or she may loose Smart Points™ and then gain them back when the problem is corrected. Through this process, players quickly learn that sometimes success does not come without failure.
A Great Tool for Parents. Smart Points™ endows parents with new ways to monitor their child’s improvement over a season; it provides them with a more accessible vocabulary and a wider range of tools for motivating and communicating with their child on and off the field.