How it works
Five answers. One season. Nothing invented.
Every practice RecHero hands you traces back to two things: decisions you made in a two-minute setup, and coaching material from sources we can name. This page shows the whole chain — what we ask, what each answer decides, where every drill comes from, and the principles the app is built to obey.
The build
From onboarding to the field
Each layer only ever reads the one above it — so week six can assume week three happened, and every value on a drill card can say where it came from.
Five answers, spoken or tapped
What each answer decides
- Age group decides the format, the ball, the field, and which rules of the game apply — a U10 team and a U12 team play genuinely different games.
- Girls, boys, or coed only routes which reference reading you see. It never changes a drill.
- Players’ experience selects which tier of season goals gets suggested.
- Town and club narrow down which league’s rulebook governs your Saturdays.
- Your schedule gives us the season’s real shape — and skips a pile of questions.
Format, season length, field rules
How the rules get resolved — in layers
Every value starts at the national default, gets overridden by your league’s own published rulebook where one is on file, and ends with what you confirm. Each value remembers which layer set it — so when a league publishes a new edition, we know exactly what changes for you and what you had already overridden.
- Rules of the bracket ride along: no build-out line at U11 and up, offside from halfway, heading budgeted at U12 — filtered into every plan, and taught, never just enforced.
- Season length is read, never asked: the calendar file carries the practices, the games, and the date of game one — which sets how much restart work fits before it.
Your formation
Where we start every 9v9 team — the triangles and diamonds your season goals train live inside this shape. It arrives with its why, you can change it, and full formation reading with every position’s job ships in the app.
Goals → arc → sessions
How every session gets filled
- Goals come from the framework below — three or four suggested from the eleven-goal library, matched to your team’s tier, and only goals the season can actually teach are ever suggested. Adjust any time.
- The arc is twelve positions, not twelve plans — laid over your 22 real practices. A second pass through a topic is a labeled revisit; repetition is the plan, not a failure of it.
- Each session runs Play–Practice–Play — arrival play, warm-up, an activation game, the topic work, a scrimmage, a recap with the exact words to say.
- Drills fill by source rank and pass your bracket’s rules as a hard filter — and every card carries its one-sentence “why.”
A change re-flows forward, never backward: swap a goal and the future sessions rebuild — the practices you already ran stay exactly as they happened.
The goal framework
Eleven goals. Your season runs on three or four.
Every session marches toward a small working set drawn from this framework — suggested for your team’s tier, adjustable any time, never a dump of the whole list.
Tier 1 The foundation — where every team starts
Own the Space
Spreading out across the whole field when your team has the ball.
Create Angles
Giving the ball-carrier at least two open teammates to pass to at all times.
Master Time, Space and Vision
Looking around before the ball arrives, so you already know your next move.
The 3 Ds of Defending
Slowing the opponent down, blocking their passes, and tackling together.
Tier 2 Building on it
Hunt in Packs
Swarming the opponent the instant you lose the ball.
Build the Overload
Getting two of our attackers against one defender.
Shift the Axis
Moving the ball from a crowded side of the field to the open side.
Lock the Center
Pinching together on defense to block the middle of the field.
Strike on the Turn
Attacking fast toward their goal the moment you steal the ball.
Tier 3 The finishing layer
Finish with Precision
Working the ball close to goal for clean shots instead of wild long-range kicks.
Stay Connected
Leaving defenders in position to guard the counter while your team attacks.
The Big Four — covered no matter what
Four restarts every rec team faces every single Saturday. They aren’t goals and they don’t compete with goals: all four get covered before your first game, then keep rotating through the season.
Goal kicks
They touch everything else, so they come early — and keep getting reps all season.
Throw-ins
The restart that happens most. Every one is a free chance to reorganize.
Kickoffs
Where your formation actually lines up — every half, every goal.
Corner kicks
Attacked at one end, survived at the other. Both jobs get taught.
The material
Where every drill comes from
When two sources could fill the same slot, rank decides — and the rank is about the kind of source, never popularity.
Higher wins — coaching flows down from the best source; rules always resolve up to the governing body.
Game length, field size, the build-out line, heading limits — those settle at the governing body or they don’t generate at all. Coaching craft flows the other way: the best available source drives, and a better one displaces it automatically.
An empty slot never gets filled with something plausible. The most relevant fundamental steps in where one fits — and where nothing honest fits, the card tells you it’s a gap we know about, in plain words.
Guiding principles
The principles RecHero is built to obey
These aren’t aspirations — they’re the product’s constitution. Breaking one is a bug, not a tradeoff.
The sideline is the spec
Built for the sideline
Designed phone-first for one hand, a coffee in the other, in daylight, outdoors. Desktop is a courtesy.
The 30-minute rule
Prep fits the drive to the field. Nothing in the app assumes you sat down the night before.
Practice survives dead zones
Once a session is running, it lives entirely on your phone. Fields have no bars; your plan doesn’t care.
Teaching is how the fun arrives
Every drill carries a “why”
One sentence on what this builds for the kids — always visible, with deeper reading below it, never instead of it.
Fun is the promise; understanding is the mechanism
Kids quit when they never get good enough to love the real game. Teaching is how the fun gets delivered.
Plans obey your bracket’s rules — and teach them
A U9 keeper can’t punt. A U10 team can’t head. Your plan already knows, filters accordingly, and tells you why.
Honest by construction
Never invents coaching
Every drill, duration, and “why” traces to a source we can name. Where we don’t have an answer, the plan says so — it never fills the gap with something plausible. You can’t evaluate soccer advice; that’s why you’re here. So we never make it up.
Play time with intent
Minutes per kid, per position, across the season — and the app knows the difference between imbalance you chose and imbalance you missed. A mistake never costs a kid minutes.
Not a compliance product
One test for every feature: does it improve what happens on the field? Your club already handles the paperwork. You signed up to coach — not to run a logistics startup.
Works the way you do
Alex reaches every surface
Anything the app can do, you can ask for by voice — and nothing hides voice-only, for the coach who’d rather tap.
Never make the coach dig
Getting back is always one tap. A forgotten timer never costs you five menus mid-practice.
Format is data, not code
6v6, 7v7, 9v9, 11v11 — every bracket’s game is described as data. A new league or age group is a new file, never a rewrite.
The app, flat-screened
One season, screen by screen
Real screenshots from a live beta season — the same Tuesday practice, from setup to the field.
Alex sets you up
A short conversation — talk or tap. Have your schedule handy and it’s faster still.
Today leads
The next practice, summarized from its own blocks — plus one coaching line worth carrying to the field.
The whole session, one glance
Numbered blocks, clock times, what you need before practice — and one green button to go live.
One screen at a time
RECHERO LIVE pages the practice — what to do, what to say, a countdown, one Advance button.
Coach does, coach says
Every drill runs in four steps. The highlighted lines are words you can read out loud, exactly as written.
The full drill card
Setup before the kids arrive, the whole game in one sentence, one thing to watch for — and the “why” on top.
What it’s all marching toward
Your three or four season goals — suggested for your team, adjustable any time, taught by every session.