After their third game and before we learned one way or the other of our chances for advancing to the final I met with them to get my two coaching points in (that's a limit they make me stick to). The girls were a little giddy, still high from the quality of their performance in the game, and a couple of players had to try to calm the rest down. "Be quiet" someone said, "he's got to do that talking thing." I surprised them by saying simply "I've only got one coaching point for you...I'm as proud of you as I could be." Their reaction, silence followed by a group "awwww" showed me that they knew they really had played well, that they'd set a new standard for themselves. They had gone into that game knowing they needed a shutout to have any chance of advancing and they delivered, playing their best, most organized defense of the whole season while still maintaining a vigorous attack that netted four goal. What better feeling is there than knowing that you have to put everything you've been working on in training on the line and be perfect for 50 minutes and then going out and actually executing!? They earned that post game moment of elation.
Everyone knows how things went after that. We ended up in a PK shootout with another team to get into the final and we lost. Their keeper was amazing and all of their shooters were cool and efficient. My girls hadn't been in that situation before but they handled it well. Natalie bravely volunteered to be the keeper and she did all she could although not a single shot taken was really in range for her to realistically make a stop. The shooters I chose, based simply on my estimation of which of them has the most consistent technique on deadball kicks, all struck the ball solidly but only one of them could find the net.
So when the referee blew his whistle to end it the girls were shocked at first and then after the hand shakes and "good games" there were some bitter and bitterly earned tears. They'd given each other everything they had and earned their chance but in this weird tie-breaker situation, which an enraged Beanie described as "not even soccer", their chance was over in what seemed like an instant. They'd earned the right to be devestated so I didn't try to talk them out of that. I'm sure everyone else had the same experience Eileen and I did. As angry as she was right then, by the time we'd had some lunch and were half way home it was all in the past, just another competition, another chapter in the story.
The previous tournament the team had played in, as a U9 squad in Columbus in the spring, was a dramatically different experience. Not only did the team play poorly that weekend but their anger and disappointment at the overall result was, to my perception, more drama than genuinely earned anguish. I wrote about my thoughts on that at the time but then felt uncomfortable sharing what I had written. Reading it back to myself then, the tone of anger and disappointment was unmistakable so I shelved it. Keep in mind that we were in the middle of a dominating league performance and I was very anxious to see the girls perform well in the Columbus tournament. At that time though I was also feeling that our training sessions weren't going as well as they could and I was feeling that the work rate, the seriousness, of our training sessions was falling off.
Anyway, here's a bit of what I wrote after that Columbus weekend:
It's endlessly fascinating to me how differently a coach's perception of a game can be from the way the players or the parents are seeing it. Our first game in the Columbus tournament was a great example of this. For the players their conversation or rather complaints after the game were all about how rough the other team was and how awful the referee was. They seemed to feel that we had the game in hand but it was snatched away by a combination of "dirty" play and poor officiating. I had seen some physical play, some foul calls missed maybe. I had seen at least two blown off-sides calls. But for all of those, let's say ten incidents total, I probably saw forty instances in the game where one of our players made a technical or mental error. Bad first touch, lazy effort away from the ball, failure to look up and see passing opportunities that were better than your dribbling path. Failures to execute on set plays like goal-kicks and throw-ins. Failures to cooperate and support each other. In short, it was clear to me that the roughness of the other team and the referee's competence had very little to do with the game's result. Our fate was in our hands and we dropped it.
Now I'm not necessarily complaining about how the girls played. They make mistakes and hopefully we learn from those and I have no expectation at this point that they should always play their most glittering soccer. Some days you just don't have it. My concern is that they may fall into a habit of looking for excuses after games when no excuse is necessary. We played poorly--the end--learn then move on. And by "learn" I mean assess your performance honestly, your individual performance and the team's performance. If there was a play where you feel you got fouled and yet the referee didn't call it, as you're licking your wounds ask yourself this: was it a situation where a few moments earlier you might have been able to make a smarter move to get into space? Was it a situation where you might have passed the ball off and avoided that pressure altogether?
All of this got me to thinking about the amount of emotional energy players put into the games, particularly their losses, and how that compares to the amount of energy in the form of focus and effort that they put into training. I'd ask every player this question: Does your emotional commitment in games match your commitment in training? Or are the two out of balance? In other words, what I'd like the players to come to realize is that if they come out on the short side in a game and they're upset they need to ask themselves is that emotional energy balanced by the knowledge that they really gave it their all at training throughout the season? If you aren't a particularly disciplined practice player, like maybe you know how to look disciplined and sort of fake your way through without really zeroing in on your technique, without mindfully struggling to improve, then what gives you the right to be all emotionally crazy on game day? Did you earn that? If you don't train as though winning is really important then how can you complain after a loss as though you think winning is really important? I guess that's the take-away for me, that players must earn the right to feel really disappointed at a loss. If you don't give it everything in practice then it's silly to let yourself get so overwrought after a game.
This season has been a different story. Generally the team's effort in training has been excellent and I do see very real and remarkable improvement in many areas of their fundamental skills. Ball striking is a great example and I'm really pleased with the general quality of the team in that regard. I'm really happy with the consistent level of their dribbling technique, even in games and under pressure. Their communication skills have improved dramatically and they are just in general playing ever more cohesively as a team. And most importantly they are playing with a very high level of commitment to each other. I see many instances in games or training where they are talking with each other about how they are performing, even demanding more of each other. And of course that has led to their new pre-match rallying cry: "Who do you play for?...I play for you!"
So in contrast to that Columbus performance I felt that at the Haunted they played with much more heart, with much more commitment to play through fouls and to play to the whistle. There was virtually no complaining about the officiating and the complaints about fouls from opponents that I did hear were usually framed in the context of a boast like "did you see what she was doing to me?...and I dribbled around her anyway!?" Every player showed at some point during the weekend their hard earned skill with the ball and as a team they played in a beautiful free flowing and creative style, demonstrating once again that they are Proper Footballers. When that PK shootout on Sunday ended and we were headed home I felt that our girls had earned their tears, their anger and disappointment. I also knew that the next time they stood, toes on the circle waiting for the whistle to blow, their minds and hearts would be fully occupied with the game at hand.
