Time

    During the mid '90s Chris and I were living in Chicago and like everybody else there we were fans of the Bulls.  I hadn't followed basketball very closely before then but watching Michael Jordan could make anyone a fan.  While watching a Bulls playoff game during one of those championship years I had a realization that has stuck with me since and has informed a lot of what I try to do as a youth coach.  In this case it was a game situation that the Bulls and their fans were familiar with; less than twenty seconds on the clock, the Bulls tied or down by one or two and of course the play would be to get MJ the final shot.  As Jordan received the in-bounds pass you could see how relaxed he was, in no real hurry to take the ball up the court, just casually letting the seconds burn off.  He floated up the court drifting to his right then cutting left.  Just getting to the three point line he rises up and as he falls back away from the basket he lets the ball fly.  Bulls win.
     After the game in conversation with some friends I said out loud what I'd been thinking as I watched Jordan move toward that final shot.  "It's like to him, ten seconds is a long time, right?"  The moment was so tense for everyone watching but Michael seemed calm, as though the seconds we agonized over were actually stretching out for him, as though time were moving more slowly.  Every fan in Chicago was yelling at their TV screens "hurry, hurry!  Only ten seconds left!"  while in his own mind I imagine Jordan was thinking "relax, plenty of time."
     Think about it this way:  Looking at the clock as the game winds down you or I see 00:20:00 and think "twenty seconds! that's not enough time" because what we're really seeing is that twenty seconds is all that's left of the game.  This is the last twenty seconds.   But I tend to think that a supremely gifted and trained athlete like MJ or Lionel Messi or Megan Rapinoe would reply "yeah, but it is still twenty seconds and I can do a lot in twenty seconds." In other words it's a matter of perspective.  While I might panic in a late game situation and think 'I've only got twenty seconds to get the ball up field and create a shooting opportunity...that's only time for one try" one of the athletes mentioned above might reply "Yeah, but I only need one chance and twenty seconds is plenty of time for one chance."  That is, they go forward without a thought about the limit the situation places on them and rather embrace the opportunity the situation presents.  The pressure of a last minute game situation could be crushing if your mental focus is on the dwindling amount of time you have.  But a player of a resilient frame of mind is one who views the time remaining as just more time to act.
     My tendency to focus all of my team's training activities on fundamental skills is obviously informed by the fact that for high-level performers those fundamentals are indispensable.  No amount of tactical training can overcome poor technical execution so I think I need to devote the majority of my training sessions to skill development.  As all the players reach a higher level of broad technical competence we can then afford to devote more time to tactics.  I have begun introducing some tactical training exercises to my teams, especially Girl Power, as I think that these exercises help to drive them to improve their technique.  You can't effectively run a passing pattern drill if your first touch and passing stroke are not consistently good so my hope is that by being put under the pressure of running such drills my players will experience and internalize the necessity of technical excellence.  As Coach Eric used to say, "don't just practice until you get it right...practice until you can't get it wrong."
      And when you do that, when you make a set of skills so second-nature that you can't get them wrong, that's when game time starts to slow down for a player.  So that's the other reason for insisting on a focus on technical excellence.  When players can really rely on their skills under pressure then they are more mentally resilient.  They see pressure situations in games as opportunities rather than limits.
     I'm a little concerned that recently I've not properly helped my Girl Power team to remain focused on that long-term goal of skill development.  When they aren't having a good game it's easy to focus on the tactical shortcomings of the team, their failure to cooperate more.  Conversely, it's easy to overlook all the little technical mistakes and deficiencies, mostly because they pass by so quickly in games it's hard to even place them into the overall context of the flow of the game.  Maintaining a disciplined detachment regarding wins versus losses is difficult but necessary...assuming, that is, that the point really is to train them all to be the best player they can be.