The Stripes.

     Something happened to the U11 boys a couple of weeks ago.  We played in Richmond against a fine MUSA squad and despite taking a loss our boys suddenly seemed to find themselves as a team.  They played with a high level of energy and ,most importantly for me, with a high level of accountability.  That is, they played like they wanted to cover for each other, to do their various jobs for each other.  There was good communication and cooperation on the field and their was a generally relaxed attitude amongst the squad.  They were having fun playing.
     Coming into the games this past weekend, one of which was a rematch with MUSA, I was really hopeful that they would carry that attitude into competition again and they did not disappoint.  At the Saturday game vs MUSA on our home field the boys were full of energy and ready to play.  Both teams played beautifully and the result was a truly enjoyable game.  The goal keeping performances alone were spectacular.
     Then on Sunday we headed to Lexington to play on a really awful field (sorry CSC but it's true) and again the Stripes played beautiful, high energy soccer with an excellent combination of skill and cooperation.  They took a tough 2-3 loss but within minutes of the game ending their mood was great.  They knew they'd played well and that the game itself was a fun, energetic match full of quality play from both sides.
     I'm hoping that the team has turned a corner and we'll keep seeing this sort of play from them.  Coach Ben helped me capture some video from both games and I've roughly edited together some highlights.  Enjoy.

An Interesting Experiment

     The video above shows just a few highlights from the game the Girl Power squad had against Ludlow this past Saturday.  As you can see, the Ludlow team had a significant size advantage and yet that didn't slow our girls down. In the video you see some excellent ball work from Hailey, Eileen and Ava.  I wanted to particularly isolate the little move that Ava executes to split two defenders, a simple toe-tap then foundation touch combo that takes her through two players who are almost standing shoulder to shoulder.  That's a clip that I'd love for every player in our club to see as it demonstrates so clearly why our simple practice routine of doing toe-taps and foundations is more than just an aerobic exercise or even, as I'm sure some players see it, a kind of punishment.  Without hesitation Ava smoothly uses the two types of touch on the ball that we've practiced so often and gracefully creates an opening allowing her to leave two defenders completely behind.
     At the end of the clip you hear me saying "No, no" because Ava cut the ball back to the center rather than continuing to take the open space available along the touch line.  But when I watched the video myself I realized that you can see her just peeking up from the ball enough to see Hailey open in the middle and so while her pass wasn't hit well her intentions were good.  Her decision to pass there probably wasn't the best one for that situation but it wasn't an unreasonable one either and it clearly shows Ava was quickly seeing more than one possible way to advance the ball toward goal.  That's what we're looking for, that level of comfort over the ball that allows a player to consider, or better yet, instinctively feel the various opportunities on the field, the various paths leading to goal.
     Going into our next game, a match Wednesday evening with ISC, I was thinking about the extent to which the girls have been showing some tendency toward cooperative play.  I began wondering whether it would be useful to introduce them to at least one simple tactical concept, not in order to develop a tactical passing attack for the team but rather to take advantage of the fact that the team as a whole seems at the moment to be developing their field awareness just as rapidly as their ball skills.  What I had in mind was to show them a simple "wall pass" or "give and go" just before the game simply as a way to push them to continue expanding their field awareness.  A goal I've been setting for all of my teams lately is to have them show me some sort of fake or feint while dribbling, from an extravagant fake shot to a subtle head fake, anything where they intentionally try to freeze a defender or get them off balance.  Well, with that in mind I thought that a wall pass is a cooperative sort of deception where two players are working together to put a defender off balance.  If the girls could understand this concept then using it would require them to assess a broader situation on the field than just the position of the ball and the next defender ahead of them.  Again, I wanted to simply try showing them the basic concept just to see how they'd respond to it.  An experiment if you will.
     So, in pregame warm-ups Coach Ron and I did a quick demo.  The girls all seemed to clearly understand the idea of the "give and go" and when I told them that an attempt to execute this play would get both players involved two points on the "tally sheet", as Ashley calls it, they were all jumping with anticipation, noisily choosing partners to make their attempt with once the game started.  And then something interesting happened.
     The ISC team we played, as always seems to be the case with ISC, was loaded with big players.  I know we're a U8 team playing in U10 but still the size disparity continues to shock me and yet the girls seemed unconcerned.  They began pressing ISC back into their own eighteen immediately and spent most of the game there.  Coach Ron was furiously at work with the clip-board marking points for moves and shots  but as the minutes passed and the score mounted he never got to make a mark for a wall pass.  Nothing even close.  At half time I complimented the girls on the quality of their play so far;  diligent, stubborn ball possession with flourishes of brilliant skill;  tireless effort, especially in recovering the ball;  etc.  Then I very gently reminded them about that give and go play.  Will anyone try it in the second half, I asked.  Again they were very excited in their response.  Yes, I'm gonna do it, most of them replied.
     The second half came and went without a single attempt to use that give and go play.  The final score was 8-1 Girl Power with two additional goals taken back due to offsides and at least another eight shots on frame that got stopped.  In other words a dominating performance and an interesting outcome to my experiment.  The girls were completely open to the possibility of executing some passing but in real game situations the individual ball skills they've worked so hard to develop serve them so well that there is rarely sufficient pressure on them to where passing seems like a necessary option.  My conclusion:  I can teach them passing tactics, but at this point I'd have to force them to use those tactics in games since the way they like to play, which is to win all the 1v1s they see between them and the goal, is working so well for them.  Well I'm not going to do that.
     One final note:  I have found that using the game assessment sheet, the one on Coach Ron's clipboard, really helps to focus the players' efforts.  But I'm not sure the players themselves appreciate it.  As Ashley put it after the game "I don't like them talleys."

Delightful performance from the Beechwood Boys

     This past Saturday the Beechwood Boys played at Erlanger Lions, easily the smallest field in the whole league.  That's a field that encourages a kick-fest type of soccer but the boys resisted that and played very skillfully with a wonderful touch on the ball throughout the game.  The result was a win, finally.  The best part of the whole game was the end though.  The boys were thrilled to have won, of course, but not overly so.  To me it seemed that they had a very relaxed "just another game" sort of attitude afterwards.
     The primary task I set for the team in this game was to show me that they could execute some sort of "fake" or feint to get the opposing player to freeze.  I told them it could be something flashy like a full on fake-shot or something as subtle as a little head-fake.  Well they dove into that assignment with gusto and I was seeing some very good deceptive dribbling throughout the game and from every player.  The video below shows Lucas pulling off a very nice little hesitation move that freezes the opposing player in place just long enough for Lucas to get by.  From there on in the video you see Lucas perform a very crisp Cruyff turn and then attempt that same move again.  Luke is playing off of Lucas at the perfect distance to be supporting without interfering and the result is something I think of as a typical "Legends overlap", that is, an accidental but very effective exchange of the ball.  Lucas isn't passing the ball to Luke as in a real overlap but Luke is anticipating that Lucas might lose possession and so he's in position to pick the ball up if that happens.  The result, splitting the defenders, is no less effective for being somewhat unplanned.   Along with all the fundamental ball skills they need, the ability to understand situations and anticipate the flow of the game is a critical component of effective cooperative play.  In this instance we see one Legends player smartly anticipating that his teammate will play like a Legends player, that is, Luke knows that Lucas is going to keep trying to dribble through until they take the ball from him so he positions himself to be ready for when that finally happens.

     Of course Luke does the same thing Lucas was trying to do and stubbornly attempts to dribble through everyone without ever looking up for a pass.  Good.  Luckily when he does lose the ball Lucas is there to cut off the shot attempt from the other team.  Energetic, supportive play.
     The rest of the video shows a great run from Oliver who had one of our goals in this game (Luke had the other two).  This run isn't the goal but it shows how hard Ollie is working and how smartly he's anticipating the possibilities. 

A note to my U10s.

Parents,

    I'm seeing the same things you are seeing in so far as other teams pass the ball more than we do and are thus more successful at moving the ball quickly into shooting range.  But try to see things from my perspective for a moment, from a perspective of player development rather than one of game outcomes, and I think you'll appreciate the progress that these teams are making.  They don't pass often and so they do miss some opportunities.  They try to dribble rather than clearing the ball out from the danger areas in front of our goal and so they concede some easy goals to the other team.  They execute dribble moves that actually take them backwards sometimes giving up two or three yards only to lose the ball and so they've conceded field position to the other team.  I know you all see it too.  They dribble, dribble, dribble...doing some crazy play-behind or spin move, gaining barely any space at all, stumbling along hardly making any progress up field and then (of course!) they lose the ball again and the other team is off and running.  If they are successful and stumble through the other team's entire defense and find themselves in shooting range they don't see the obvious passing opportunity but rather they stubbornly try to take one more touch and get the shot for themselves.  In short, they fail and fail and fail again.  They fail like crazy.  They fail everywhere on the field.  At both ends and in every imaginable situation they fail repeatedly...and they do so fearlessly!  Beautifully!  Gloriously!  They fail without being defeated, without giving up.  They fail and then they charge in to take another chance.  They want the ball.  

     How many of you played baseball or softball as a kid, maybe just at school?   Do any of you remember standing in right field thinking "please, don't hit it out here"?  Many of the boys on these teams, when I first met them were players I would assess as being somewhat timid on the field, as being perpetual second stringers who look to get rid of the ball rather than face the pressure of being the one who takes charge, the one who dominates and charges forward.  And now!?  They're ball hogs, rarely showing any hesitation to get the ball and get to work trying to dribble around everyone in their path.  Now they're the kid who wants to play shortstop, who says in his head "yeah, hit it to me".   Is passing up field more effective?  In the long run, yes, obviously, and that aspect of the game is a beautiful thing too.  At this age though, is passing also easier on a team, on individual players?  You're damn right it is!  And look at your boys, doing the hard work of learning how to dribble, how to be a creator of space and opportunities.  Look at how hard they work!  And look at how they love it.  I don't know what they say about the games on the ride home, if anything.  But I can tell you that their attitude in the games and on the sidelines is excellent.  They're relaxed and joking with each other, giving each other the business about this or that like a group of locker room veterans, enjoying themselves thoroughly.  They're a pleasure to be around.

Take away the pressure to win now.  Take away the concern over the score and make the game about how they each as individual players challenge themselves in a game and see how they relax and throw themselves into the joy of it.  And then think of how valuable that same frame of mind will be to them in other aspects of their life, in school work in particular.  Aren't there situations in their schoolwork where they complain and hesitate because they fear the work and the possibility of failure?  But look at how they are learning a different attitude, at least in regards to soccer where they are learning to think "Hard work?  Failure?  Well that's just part of it.  Let's get on with it then."

Passing will come.  For some of the boys passing opportunities are something they already see and try to take advantage of.  I'll encourage that sort of creativity too when I see it.  They'll get stronger and develop better shooting strokes.  They'll get faster.  Wins will come too.  For now, though...patience.