A little Crystal Palace in Southern Indiana

I thought some of the Crystal Palace supporters on the board might find this tidbit interesting. I found out a few weeks ago that the soccer club my kids are affiliated with has the good fortune of having a former Crystal Palace academy instructor join the club as skills instructor for at least the next year. This week it was confirmed that he is going to be coaching my son's U13 team. I am looking forward to seeing what type of instruction he brings with him from England.

 

Fantastic news for you and your kids. Hopefully they will benefit from his instruction and learn a lot throughout their season.

Indiana University hasn't benefited from many home grown talents as of late. So, hopefully your kids will get them back on track.

 

As a Palace supporter this is great news. You will have to keep us posted on how the team does.

 

I will from time to time update this thread with the development of the teams skill sets under their new coach.

To be honest victories for this team will come in measures other than wins and losses and each parent on the team is fully aware of this. Coach Moore was very honest in assessing the teams skill level for which I respect him greatly. He did not promise wins but did promise that if we gave him the boys for a year he would develop their football skills. If he can motivate the boys the way he did the parents at the initial meeting I am sure their development will be considerable.

 

Best of luck to your boy, BarryP, and congratulations. Good to see Palace investing in the U.S. with this youth club and the Baltimore Cyrstal Palace club. Looking forward to updates.

Palace! Palace! Palace!

 

I ran across this thread an thought I would do one final update to it.

This coaching situation ended poorly for more reasons than I will go into. I will not say it was a complete failure because the boys that put in a decent effort at practice did show improvement but things just did not work out. After the fall session three boys left the team and it was decided that a new coach was needed. During the winter months we added four boys and a new coach who is from Carlisle, England.

I really don't see much difference in the coaching methods either coach employs outside of the fact that the new coach seems much more concerned about the boys having fun.

The results this spring have been a mixed bag in two games. In the first the squad played poorly losing 3-0 but the result was kinder than the play on the field dictated it should be. In the second the squad dominated the second half of play in a 3-2 win. Some superb keeping and a few missed chances kept the final outcome close.

All in all I will judge the final outcome of the season more by player improvement and smiles on the boys faces than outcomes but I must admit it was nice to see them get their first win of the year and even nicer that it come on the same day Fulham pulled out the victory over Man City.