Here's a great way to improve your skills and challenge your friends and family! Join the United Jugglers!

Purpose

United Jugglers is designed to promote, encourage and challenge our players to spend more of their free time juggling. As we all know, juggling is an integral part of player development. It is also a known fact that all good jugglers are not necessarily good soccer players, but it is certain that all good soccer players are good jugglers. We want to encourage our young players to make juggling a habit because:

• Players develop better overall ball manipulation skills
• Players develop coordination, balance, reaction speed, learn to use both feet etc.
• Players can set and achieve goals (personal juggling record) and also develop good work/practice habits and determination to reach those goals

See the article below for a few more good reasons and some excellent games and drills to help you advance in the Juggling Club.

Levels

• Gold: 1,000 juggles - name on website, certificate, and t-shirt
• Silver: 500 juggles - name on website and certificate
• Bronze: 100 juggles - name on website
• Junior (U11 and below): 50 juggles for U11 players, 25 juggles for United Juniors academy players - name on website and certificate
• Senior (parents): 100 juggles - name on website and certificate

Process

• All juggles must be done in front of a coach and not in front of a team manager, parent, friend, etc.
• All juggles must be feet only!
• The coach will email the United Jugglers coach, Bobby Puppione, at jugglingclub@birminghamunited.com with the participant's name, team, and number of juggles.

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FIRST TOUCH = FIRST CLASS

by Andrew Brower, Director, United Juniors Academy

We have come a long way over the past few years as a soccer club, and each player has made great strides to seek excellence in their improvement on the soccer pitch. In order for our players in Alabama to be successful, it is important that we really refine and improve our first touch.

Below I will list some activities to help facilitate the process of improving your first touch as a player. Each one of these will be useful to help increase your juggle count, but also to help you with your technical receiving, and skill on the ball during training and matches. Try some of these out with a regular routine and your first touch will greatly improve.

THE ONE-BOUNCE GAME

Players juggle but are allowed a bounce in between each touch. It is important to make sure that you use both feet. This is a great activity for those players just learning how to juggle/improve their first touch

Modifications:

• Alternate feet
• Take a bounce juggle twice with the same foot, and then bounce, then juggle twice with the opposite foot, repeat etc
• Juggle foot, thigh, then a bounce, then switch feet/legs
• Juggle foot, head, thigh, foot then a bounce and switch legs/feet

REGULAR JUGGLING IDEAS

• Juggle Feet Only
• Alternate right to left foot
• Around the world - this is a hard one! Start with ball on right thigh, then right foot, to right shoulder, to head, to left shoulder, to left thigh, to left foot, back to right thigh and then repeat
• Juggle feet only, keeping the ball below your knees
• Juggle feet only keeping the ball below your shins
• Take one to two touches (start any touch progress to feet only) then knock the ball to head level, then receive, take one to touches then hit the ball to head level again
• Take one to two juggles, knock the ball over your head/find it, then take the ball out of the air(without a bounce), and continue the process with one to two touches, then knock the ball over again

JUGGLE SEQUENCE GAME

Players will begin with one juggle with either foot, then add one more juggle with the other foot, then switch back to the other foot, and add another juggle. Keep on going as high as you can go.

Example: Right foot = 1, Left foot =2, Right foot = 3, Left Foot = 4 and continue

JUGGLE AGAINST A WALL

Take one to two touches, and hit a ball up against a wall and or a hard surface. Then, receive the ball out of the air without a bounce;take one to two touches again.

Modifications:

• one foot only
• alternate feet
• touch to the wall must be headed
• must receive the ball out of the air feet only

SOCCER TENNIS

This is a great game to play with a partner and something great to do before and after practice. Here is the basic game.

Set up a makeshift "net" out of cones, a ladder, or even a row of soccer bags stacked up, or use one of the very cool soccer tennis nets. Then cone off a small sized "court" to fit the number of players and the net. If you are playing on the driveway use some chalk or just the lines in the pavement. Needless to say, if you have a real tennis court at your disposal, try it..... (As long as you don't get yelled at by the tennis coach.)

Divide up teams. You can play 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or even 4v4 on a large court. You can play odd numbers like 2v3, etc. One player serves from deep in their court across the net to the other team. At first the idea is not to win the point on the serve, but just get the point started.

We usually bounce the ball and then half-volley it across for the serve, but some variations we use are - serving the ball off the ground after a "toe-lift", or just directly "flipping" it over with one's toe. Sometimes we toss it up in the air and "head" it over to get things started.

Then the defending player controls the serve, sometimes after a bounce but occasionally out of the air. They will learn quickly to get their bodies in front of the ball and use their thighs, chest or head to make contact.

Then you start counting bounces on the ground. Of course in real tennis, the players are only allowed 1 bounce. You will eventually get this good with soccer tennis, but start with more bounces to allow for learning. I let my little kids take 3 or 4 bounces but the older kids are allowed only 1 or 2. (And of course, the coaches are only allowed 1.)

Juggling (without the ball bouncing) is encouraged. It doesn't "count" against the player and they can maneuver the ball close to the net for a better shot. Players can and should pass to each other. They will learn to chip a deep shot up to their team mate who then can try to put it away.

It can be lots of fun while they refine a soft touch with their juggle touches, volleys and half-volleys.