Day 1 of the C Course and after 5 hours of driving we stopped at a local gastropub to watch Manchester City vs Chelsea and Barcelona vs Athletico Madrid. Upon watching those games, we stopped at our Air B&B, settled ourselves in and headed right to the introductory meeting for the C Course.

The one underlying concept we were informed about, was that this course is candidate centered as opposed to being instructor centered. This means that the instructors were here for us. They were here to help us each as individual coaches and not treat us all as one group – similar to how US Soccer asks that we treat our training sessions. A candidate centered course meant that the instructors were not here to lecture us the entire time. They wanted to hear our thoughts, opinions, and reflections on the art of coaching. The beauty of this was that we got to learn from not just two people, but from 22 people in that classroom every single day.

Another interesting topic of discussion was the question of what soccer means to us. George split everyone up and had us discuss with a partner what soccer was to them. After doing so, we gathered again and shared our thoughts and opinions. To me, soccer was my psychiatrist. Soccer was my way of forgetting about all the negativity that went on in my life. From my parents divorce to even the happier times in my life, soccer was always what was there for me. For others, soccer was life. Soccer was where they learned how to deal with certain life situations through the use character and values.

What a great start to the course. If you would like to catch some video footage, John Kokkoris made a vlog for each day just as I have blog for each day. Here it is.

If you have yet to read about my introduction to the course, click here. For Day 2, click through to get to the USSF C Course – Day 2.