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."