Girl Power Skills!

     What a great game that was!  The sudden improvement by the whole squad in terms of their field awareness was wonderful.  I've noticed in the past that sometimes a little break away from the game can give players time to "percolate" as it were, so that when they get back to it they are suddenly more comfortable with a move they've been working on or they are seeing the field and their teammates more clearly.
     In last night's game the girls were clearly playing with better peripheral vision and while they still had moments where they got in each others way they were generally maintaining more thoughtful spacing.  I saw a lot of very smart movement by players away from the ball and there was much more anticipation of where the ball might be headed so that we had less chasing in this game.
     The level of skill on display too was wonderful.  Every player at the U8 level should be able to execute a simple cut move where they move laterally to get past a defender but when you see so many of our girls bravely trying more complex skills and fakes you've got to be proud of them.  Their commitment to being skillful is their best asset as a team.  Notice the difference in the way the two teams scored their goals last night.  The other team managed most of theirs on break-away one v one situations.  Kudos to them for seizing those opportunities.  But most of our goals came in situations where our attacking players (usually all of them but our keeper) were crowding into the other team's goal area.  That is clearly the result of the way they are getting the ball up the field, i.e, with patient dribbling and short passes.  How many times did we see them execute a sort of "ladder" up the field with one player taking on a defender or two then making a short pass up to our next player and so on.  I was really impressed by that because it shows how some of our girls are beginning to understand how to play in support of a teammate who has the ball.
     Finally I want to note how attentive the players were to the game when they were on the bench.  I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I think it's really important for them to watch the game when they aren't in.  Last night I was stunned at how tuned in to the game all of our players were while on the bench.  There was cheering but there was also a lot of thoughtful and funny conversation among them about what they were seeing from their teammates on the field.  At one point I said to the girls on the bench that since they all seemed to be doing so well in maintaining their spacing the next step was for them to work on anticipating the action better.  One of them asked what "anticipating" meant and after I tried to explain they went back to watching the game.  A few moments later Maya noticed something in the action on the field and she said to everyone on the bench "right there, she did not do a good job predicting the future."  Hilarious and accurate.