Back to Basics

    Sorry it's taken me so long to get to writing about Saturday's games.  It was a very good day in that I was able to stay at the field all day and see so many of our Legends players in action.  The progress players across the club are making is wonderful and our teams, especially the U8 teams, definitely have a distinctive playing style that catches the attention of other club parents and coaches.  Coach Eric was there Saturday with both his U8 boys teams and during the game for his younger squad a parent on the other sideline was overheard saying "I'm glad we're playing them this year and not next year."  I assume he meant that it was clear that with the skills those boys were showing it is just a matter of time until they are dominating other teams.  That sounds like the situation Girl Power are in now.  Last fall they were full of potential but now they are full of goals!
     My own teams' games were a mixed bag and it's taken me a few days of mulling it over to figure out what seemed wrong about the way my U10 teams played.  Where that thinking lead was to the painful conclusion that it wasn't how my players had played that was bothering me, rather, it was how I'd handled those games as a coach.  I realize now that on Saturday I allowed myself to drift away from the coaching principles that have been successful in the past for me.  I'd gotten ahead of myself and started coaching for "team" performance rather than staying focused on individual performances.  At least that's what happened in Saturday's U10 games.
     The best way to make clear what I mean is to reference a post I wrote nearly two years ago describing my coaching strategy for the teams I was working with then.  If you can, take a moment to follow this link and read it.  In that post I lay out a few simple points of focus that I wanted to keep in the forefront throughout that season's training sessions;  things like posture, soft touch, field awareness.  My intention was to stay focused on individual skill development and then assume that cooperative team play would sort of develop naturally as the players became ever more competent and confident.  As evidence that that approach can work I give you the U8 Girl Power squad.
     The U8 girls were awesome Saturday and again played with an amazing combination of individual ball skill and team cooperation.  The cooperative play isn't all that organized yet.  Rather,  it's just a generally more effective spacing on the field; they have a good sense of where they all are on the field.  As one parent described it to me in the context of their defense, it's not so much that they maintain defensive positioning as it is that they move to re-take the ball in waves (or concentric circles maybe) with one player taking a direct path to the ball and then her teammates taking ever wider looping paths to cut off the other team's progress.  So rather than all of our players concentrating at the point of attack they anticipate where the next point of attack might be and the next one and so on.   It's a new development for the team and it's beautiful and it's largely something that they've put into play on their own.  All we work on in practice are their dribbling skills.  All I talk to them about are their dribbling skills with additional simple admonishments to "keep your heads up", "know where your teammates are."  This developing version of cooperative play is essentially their own creation.
     But while the subtleties of that sort of "team" play are delightful the real beauty of Girl Power's  play is obviously their individual dribbling skill.  They are, every single player, completely committed now to dribbling and to being deceptive.  That is what makes this group of players so much fun to work with.  I don't have to convince them of the value of the deceptive dribbling skills they are learning.  They've already bought into it wholeheartedly.  Add to that their natural gifts like speed and determination and you get a team that is constantly on the attack.  With this team I can spend the whole game focusing moment by moment on each player individually, taking sideline opportunities with them to offer only simple points about the way they used a move or what other move I'd like to see them try.  The overall flow of the game I leave to them and they take care of it.
     Going forward I've got to be sure I maintain that same sort of focus with the U10 boys;  stay focused on their play as individuals and convince them that their success on any game day is tied to their effort, not to the final score.  I pride myself on being the type of coach who is always focused on teaching "the basics" and yet here I am needing to be reminded: get back to the basics!