The first edition of the 2019 refresher course for female coaches was held in Kanagawa from Friday 24 to Sunday 26 May. This refresher course has been held quarterly since 2016 to aid female coaches that are working to acquire an advanced JFA official coaching licence.

In this edition of the course, where the participants included current university students, the first day started off with an orientation, followed by lectures on “play analysis and planning” and “coaching methods.” The participants then watched the semi-final match played between Japan and Australia at the AFC U-16 Championship Malaysia 2018, to analyse the match and build a training menu for the practical training session that was scheduled on the following day.

A practical training session was held on the second day, as women’s university students attended the session to play out the role of the players. Following the training session, the participants discussed the topics of organisation and coaching with other participants and the instructors. With the group conducting two training session, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, each participant gave out a five-minute speech, followed by an analytical report given by the JFA technical study group on the AFC Women's Asian Cup 2018. The group then reviewed the practical training sessions before revising their training menu for the following day.

The final day saw the participants concluding the training session with a scrimmage. With limited numbers of participants taking the course, each participant was able to conduct seven sessions, making it an intense, but productive refresher course for everyone.

The second edition of the 2019 refresher course for female coaches will take place on Friday 12 to Sunday 14 July at Ishikawa.

Instructor's Comment

YAMAJI Yoshihito, JFA National Training Centre Coach (Women's, Cheif of Tohoku Region/Vegalta Sendai)
This year’s first refresher course for female coaches saw three active university students joining the course to participate in our lectures and practical training sessions. We conducted the course so that the participants can develop their coaching skills by going through the cycle of game analysation, planning of the training menus, and the actual training sessions on the field. Over the three days, I feel like the participants showed an enormous amount of improvements. I hope that they will utilise what they’ve learned from this course to help their local football community develop future talents. I would like to thank the members of the Kanagawa University Women’s football team for helping us conduct this refresher course.

Participants' Comments

Ms. YONEMOTO Minori (Kanagawa)
Prior to joining this course, I have acquired my “C” class licence, but I wanted to improve myself even more. Through the three-day course, I was able to obtain a great learning experience and I feel more confident giving out coaching sessions on the field. I was very nervous at first, but now I feel very confident about myself, so this was a great experience for me.

Ms. TEZUKA Nanami (Tokyo)
Even when I am coaching at my team, I don’t normally get this much feedbacks, so this course allowed me to make adjustments from the feedbacks to improve myself. With very few participants taking the course, we were able to gain thorough feedbacks and I feel like I was able to obtain a precious experience. I hope to utilise this experience to my future activities.

Ms. NAKAYAMA Momoka (Kanagawa)
I knew we were going to conduct a practical training session, but I didn’t expect to get the opportunity to conduct seven sessions with two-days, so this was a very productive refresher course. All I can say is that, it was much harder than I thought. It made me want to observe how our coaches are conducting the training sessions at a daily basis. I honestly thought that coaching is a wonderful skill.