Sunday, April 22, 2018

Girl Power. Learning How to Play Together.

     I only had two coaching points to make with the team prior to the first match of the season, the one at McClure against the Lakota team.  My first was to point out the field conditions.  Wet, long grass does not make for ideal conditions if your goal as a team is to possess the ball by dribbling and passing.  I warned the team to expect their opponent to try to play long balls over the top often.   Then I suggested that despite all of my coaching to the contrary maybe we should do the same.    I was happy to see that for the most part they insisted on dribbling anyway, insanely (or bravely) continuing to try to work the ball up field through 1v1s.
     My second point was to ask them to be patient with each other.  The players on this team generally get along with each other just fine at training and in games.  But they aren't what I'd describe as "tight" just yet.  There are moments when you can see that they frustrate each other and there are shifting alliances among them.  That's to be expected and we will work through it.  With that in mind I asked them all to be aware of just how few games this current group has played.  Be patient, even generous, I asked them.  Trust each other because you're all working toward the same goal and over time as you get more playing experience you'll get a feel for how to work together.
     For some time my approach to coaching the game has been to focus mostly on developing fundamental skill competence in my players and then let them discover cooperative play on their own during scrimmages and games.  We talk a lot about field positions and our tactical shape on the field, about what responsibilities the various positions entail, but my assumption is that players will largely learn those tactical aspects of the game by exploring them for themselves during play.   My reasoning in taking this approach has always been that players have to be motivated to improve in any aspect of the game by their own joy in the game, they have to want to be better because they love how it feels to play well.  So, the first step in that process is the joy they all feel in putting the ball in the net.  This drives them to want the ball in games and to want to attack.  Then comes the joy they feel winning individual 1v1s either attacking or defending and this drives them to work on their dribbling technique and their touch on the ball.  The final big step is learning the joy of playing as a group, or better, as a pack.  For me personally as a player, as good as it feels to school an opponent in a 1v1, maybe even nutmeg them, the greatest joy in the game is in creating a goal with your teammates in an effort that feels both spontaneous and coordinated.  It's that feeling of imposing yourself on your opponent together like a pack of wolves driving their prey with every member of the group bringing their individual skills to bear in a coordinated way.  It's thrilling and I think that when players catch that feeling it can change their attitude toward and understanding of the game.
      So for the players on Girl Power who've been around the longest, they've known that feeling.  They've played games where they dominated the ball and their opponents with a gracefully knit combination of skill and cooperation.  And now they're starting over again with the addition of some wonderful new teammates.  That's why my advice to the team is to be patient, even generous with each other.  Give yourselves time to get to know each other and when it starts to happen for you the progress will be rapid.
     That first game showed that they can achieve a team unity.  There was lots of insane individual dribbling into pressure situations where a bit of cooperative play might have been wiser.  But throughout the game they were regularly chattering on the bench about "that big girl" on the other team and by the end of the match they'd dubbed her "Gigantor".  That was a great sign for me as it shows them recognizing some aspect of the game as a challenge they can face together.  Even if their overall performance was a bit flat it seemed to me that they still came away from the game feeling positive, even excited about how they'd played.  That's where it starts, with them knowing that they can endure a loss together.
     The team's shared effort to stand up to Gigantor was a sign of progress and that would become apparent in their very next match.

No comments:

Post a Comment