IQFC – A kids soccer club with a lasting impact

It goes without saying that a good kids soccer club has many long-term benefits. It creates community, encourages social and emotional progress, promotes a passion for learning, encourages healthy habits, and boosts confidence, just to name a few. You can check out one of our recent blogs that goes into more detail on these specific benefits.

But, a great kids soccer club will have a lasting impact that has the potential to change the trajectory of a child’s life. We believe there is such importance on a kids soccer club culture – the expression of their attitudes, beliefs and values about football, and by extension about life.

Our Club Culture

Our IQ football technical coaches and leadership team focus on five core values, under the acronym (BRAIN). These include the habits of belief, resilience, accuracy (whole-hearted work ethic), integrity, and the habit of nurturing your development. A great kids soccer club will instil a sense of these shared goals and achievements in their leadership team and players.

One of our most pressing shared goals is to know and nurture our brains. It is to know the power of our minds and to use it for our benefit, not to our detriment. This is not some sort of “self-help” sell. We don’t punt emotional appeals or false promises. Science continues to demonstrate that you can control your mind and that this determines your performance. We use data-based methods that have been tried and tested. Yes, it is true that the professional game is no longer dependent on physical ability alone but, more so than ever, on a player’s intelligence.

But, not all our players will become professional footballers. With our captive audience, we believe we have the privilege of instilling lessons that will go on to serve the child for the rest of his life.

Thoughts shape who you are and who you will become

As a kids soccer club, we believe that one of the most powerful things we can train a player in is their understanding of thoughts and choice. You can’t control everything that happens on the field, much like you can’t control everything that happens in life. What you can control is how you react.

Our reactions have a far greater impact on the field than we dare to imagine. Once a player has analysed the field in front of them, where will they choose to pass? Have they trained their brain to make the best choice? Does their coach understand how to train their brain? If he makes a crucial mistake and passes wrong, will they allow that failure to affect his confidence and belief in the game, or will they bounce back and play with focus?

What is a player thinking when the other team is 3-0 up in the game? If they choose to think negative, self-abusing, self-defeating thoughts, neurologically, those thoughts are not only hindering them from achieving what they want to achieve in that moment, but they are also building memories about their competence, which affects their future.

In its most basic sense, it is proven that positive thoughts and emotions help enable the Prefrontal Cortex of the brain to operate optimally. Concentration and memory are improved when thoughts are positive. This means that a player is more likely to focus and think deeply during an activity that they have set out to achieve if their thought life is positive. By working on a player’s thoughts, they will be working on improving their cognitive skills, the football skill they are working on, their self-confidence and their growth mindset. What a player thinks on the field, affects the game as much as what they do with their feet.

A kids soccer club that will have a lasting impact knows their club culture, has a clear sense of shared goals, and instils lessons that will stand their players in good stead for life.