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.

Girl Power U10 Debut.

     We had a really good training session Monday evening that included four rounds of 1v1 games at 3:30 each.  That's a pretty strenuous workout and I was really happy with the level of effort and the quality of play I was seeing from the team.   They worked very hard during the technical part of the session and, always game to play, the girls were enjoying themselves thoroughly in the 1v1s, with lots of laughter and plenty of ribbing about nutmegs and successful moves.
     After such a good session I was really anxious to see them get to play the next night in their first U10 game but the weather forecast was dreadful and so my mood later that night and most of the day Tuesday was a bit sour.  Miraculously though with the field at Boone draining well and the forecast suddenly changing for the better we got cleared to play and under threatening but ultimately benign skies Girl Power took to the field as a U10 team.
     I knew that Coach Oertel's team had changed a bit since the fall season.  He lost some of his older players and had picked up some girls new to Legends, a couple of those being true U8 players like our girls.  Speaking to Girl Power after Monday training I had reminded them that what we expect when we play, especially against older players, is that we'll get fouled a lot and that's just part of the deal when you play the way we do.  If you are always trying to possess the ball for long runs you're going to be in a lot of situations where you get hacked.  What do we do, I asked them.  "We deal with it" was the reply from Ashley.  And it's as simple as that.  Going forward I'm sure we will see plenty of hacking from other teams on our NKSL schedule but that's not what we saw from Coach Oertel's Legends.  His team was working hard to play skillfully and I was impressed with their level of commitment to that.  No kickball from them, just fundamental soccer; trap, possess, dribble.  They played like a Legends squad and the result was a really enjoyable, high quality game.  It is really thrilling to see so much talent on all of our Legends teams.  The next few years are going to be a blast!

     Now, as for the Girl Power performance, we have to start the game review by noting that while every one of our girls played beautifully and with a tremendous level of energy and persistence it was our two youngest players, Olivia and Hailey who led the scoring with a brace of goals each.  I think both of Olivia's were the culmination of long runs from break-away situations.  Her patience in each case was brilliant as she held her shot until she got well into the penalty area despite having one or two defenders on her heels.  For Hailey, one of those goals was in a similar sort of counter-attack situation but her first was a brilliantly woven run through three defenders, back and forth in the penalty area.  She was coming from the keepers left and lost the ball once before doggedly running it down and taking it back.  When she finally broke past that last defender she sized things up then made a deft touch to the keepers right and into the low corner.  Just a beautiful shot.
     Girl Power created a lot of chances in the first half and they were regularly testing the other keeper, but Coach Oertel's girl really stood on her head out there for a while, blocking every shot we took.  I'm sorry I don't know her name because that was a performance to remember.  The number of chances the girls had in the first half was really a result of two things.  First there was the unbelievable tenacity of Ava and Zoe as they covered the midfield, tracking down every lose ball or harassing the other team every time they started to get a run going.  With those two combining that tenaciousness to recover the ball with the smartness of their touches once they have the ball, their knack for finding the open side of the field, our attack during that first half was usually flowing right out of our work on defense.  Secondly, there was the team's persistence when we had the ball.  Abby was the leader in this respect, dribbling the opposing defenders into exhaustion.  Near the end of the first half, as Abby was dribbling in and out of the defense along the touch line for the what seemed like the twentieth time, I figured she had to be just gassed.  But no, she just kept spinning with the ball, showing it then pulling it out of reach until, yet again, she turned the last defender around and was clear into space and headed to goal.  With her strike on the ball having become so much more powerful lately it's remarkable that she didn't score.  More testimony to the quality of their keeper I guess.
     The team had worked on a Cruyff/Left Pull-Back combo at training the night before and I think every one of the girls tried to pull it off in the game.  That commitment to dribbling into and out of tight spots is so effective because it really wears a defense out and our girls were totally committed last night.  They are all so hungry for that goal that they just won't give up on the ball when they are in striking distance.
     One aspect of the work we've done as a team over the last eight months that has now come to full fruition is the comfort level of all of the girls with dribbling back toward our own goal when necessary to find space.  I feel that's a critical step in their development both in terms of their technical competency and their overall field awareness.  You see them now being more aware of where the open space is and what opportunities are there to be exploited as they become more instinctively attentive to where everyone is on the field.  At one point though, after watching Eileen and then Ava repeatedly take the ball way back, like fifteen yards back, I was standing on the sideline about to send Zoe in and I said to her "I know it's taken a while for you all to get comfortable carrying the ball backwards when necessary but..."  Zoe finished my sentence for me.  "But we don't need to do it all the time, right?"  Right.
     The chances kept coming in the second half and Ashley managed a goal, a beautifully placed chip to the keepers left that showed great patience and awareness.  Ashley had been in position for several shots in both halves and was really seeing the flow of the game well.  Late in the second half she found Emily twice with nice crossing passes right into the six yard box.  Emily wasn't able to get past the keeper either time but her vision in those cases, getting into the right spot while remaining on-side, was really good.  Emily had some wonderful runs in both halves and I was particularly impressed with a moment in the first half where she managed to beat two defenders by using the simplest little hesitation move, something I imagine all the girls have seen Hay-hay use many times.  Emily was in full stride with her dribble then as she got to within three yards of the next defenders she stepped on the ball and hesitated about a half  second, just long enough for them to start to commit to coming in for the ball and that's when she took off.  She was two yards past them before they got turned around.  That is deceptive dribbling at it's purest.
     Finally, I have to mention the play of the game.  There were so many great moments for our girls, so much skillful play, but the stand out for me was in response to that last run Coach Oertel's girls made.  It was a clean counter-attack break away with one of their best players, Jenny, getting a good five yard head start on our last defender.  Jenny has excellent touch on the ball, good speed and a great nose for the goal but unfortunately for her that last Girl Power defender was our little Scout.  Ava ran her down like a cheetah after a gazelle and having covered our entire half of the field she caught Jenny about two yards into the penalty box and with a simple touch knocked the ball off Jenny's foot and safely out of bounds, going down in the effort.  Unbelievable!  Just unbelievable!
    

U10 Kick-off! What to look for as the season goes forward.

     Saturday was the season opener for our younger U10 boys team (in my schedule I've been referring to them as "the juniors").  With only one practice together to build on I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of play from the team Saturday evening.  Prior to the game I talked with the team just a bit about what I'd be looking for in the game and I'd like to elaborate on that here for the sake of helping our team parents to understand how I work with my teams.
     If you haven't already heard, the focus of all Legends training sessions will be the development of each player's ball control skills with a constant emphasis on deceptive dribbling skills or "moves" as we call them.  A typical Legends practice will involve only activities that have players getting lots of repeated touches on the ball.  We avoid any type of drill that has players standing in line for long periods of time and we will rarely if ever spend time working on passing or other tactical aspects of the game.  The reason for this is a simple one:  learning how to be an effective dribbler is a time intensive process for most players and so we need to devote as much of our practice time to that as possible.  We proceed under the assumption that all of our players can learn to be attacking players capable of penetrating defenses with good dribbling technique.  Every practice and every game is an opportunity to work on the set of skills an attacking, goal scoring player needs.
     As the season goes on I'm sure I'll have more opportunities to discuss how our Legends approach differs from how other clubs, even at the select level, train their players.  For right now let me give you a brief summary of what a typical Legends practice will look like.
     First we'll begin with ten to fifteen minutes of warm-up involving some sort of game that has players running a lot, usually with a ball.  Some sort of "tag" is our go to for this warm-up period.
Next we'll have fifteen minutes of skill work involving basic ball-touch techniques such as toe-taps and foundations.  From there we'll work into some specific sort of dribbling skill or "move" and have the players practice it first in a no pressure situation where they can figure out the details.  Then we'll put them in a smaller space and give them a set time period in which to complete that "move" as many times as possible.  So, at that point we're adding a little pressure.
     Finally we'll end every practice with at least twenty minutes of 1v1 play.  If you haven't seen a Legends 1v1 session, be prepared.  It's crazy.  We play all of the players on the field at the same time, paired up into separate 1v1 matches played simultaneously.  It's crowded and chaotic so there's some very game-like pressure put on them.  We play games of two or three minute duration then re-pair the players and go again and again until we're out of time.  We'll include certain rules in the games to encourage the players to use the moves we've been practicing such as "you can't score until you do your Puskas move".  We also play the game as "make-it-take-it" which means that if you score a goal you get the ball back and get to go again.  As a defender, the only way to get the ball is to take it.  You can't just wait for your opponent to score so that it's then "your turn".
     That's about it for a typical session.  Then when we get to game days my instruction to the team will also be focused on their use of those "moves".  I'll be trying every week to make it clear to them that I'm not concerned at all about the game outcome.  Rather, what I'm looking for is to see them using their skills in game situations.  That does not mean that I want them to not care if we win or lose.  I always want my players to be motivated by a desire to compete hard and win but I need them to feel comfortable with trying new things in games, with attempting to use the skills they are developing in pressure situation.  The best way I can do that is to convince them that making mistakes in the games is a good thing, it's part of the process for them of growing into better players.  Don't be afraid to fail.
     I want to end by noting that I was very impressed by the level of skill and frequency of attempts to play skillfully that I saw Saturday.  Obviously the score got lopsided but the boys never got down.  Every time the other team scored they just ran to the circle for another kick-off and that's all you can want from them.  They play for the fun of it and my job is just to help them have even more fun by playing the game with skill and creativity.

Girl Power Strong in Academy Debut!

    

Legends U9 Academy, Spring 2015

     What a great day for two games and a Girl Power debut in the Academy!  Thanks to everyone for dealing with the traffic hassles to get to Lexington for our season opener.  The girls had a great time and they played so beautifully, showing no signs of being overwhelmed by the new level of competition.
     Of the two LFC teams we faced, the first was considered by their Academy director to be their least experienced team.  That showed as they did have trouble dealing with the level of skill Girl Power brought to the game.  As usual we were seeing opposing players get frustrated with our ability to possess the ball for long stretches.  Using their ball control skills Girl Power really dictates the pace of play even if it appears sometimes that the other team is playing frantically, fouling our girls repeatedly to get to the ball.  Of course the girls were talking to me on the sidelines about that fouling but as I explained to them, they've got to expect to see a lot of that as usually other teams don't know how to respond to our style of play other than to start grabbing at us from behind.  So long as they have to foul us from behind like that I know we've got them where we want them...on the wrong side of the ball.  This issue of fouls and poor officiating will continue to be something they have to learn to deal with and my goal will be to instill in them a certain sense of indifference to it.  So long as all we have to deal with is an occasional high elbow or shirt-grab from behind I'll be happy to see the girls just play through it and so I'll try to maintain a very even temper in my responses on the sideline, both to what happens on the field and to how the referee deals with that.
     Anyway, the girls were annoyed by the physical play of LFC but they were not intimidated.  That team had a serious height advantage on us but our girls handled the situation with their usual energy and creativity.  If we were keeping score, and we don't at Academy dates, I imagine the result would show that we had dominated the game, although I can't say for sure as the score may have been six to nothing or maybe not...who knows;)
    As for the second game, I have to tell you that I heard from Coach Ben that the team we faced in that one is the one that LFC considers their number one group.  And yet, our girls controlled that game throughout too, again, through skillful ball control, and an amazing combination of patience and tenacity.  They were patient as they probed the LFC defense over and over again, 1v1, looking for an opening and resisting the urge to just kick it and run.  They did this even though the team they were facing was physically imposing, aggressive and, to some degree, skillful.  Girl Power were tenacious in that they never conceded possession and never allowed them a clean break-away or counter attack.  Zoe personally must have chased down their lead runner six or seven times, deftly taking the ball off them running straight into our own goal before making a quick turn out to safety.  Man, she must have been annoying the heck out of them.  She's the most tenacious defender I've ever coached.  And how many times did you see one of our players confidently dribble out of trouble in our penalty area by crossing our own goal?  Does that make you nervous?  Of course it does, but it also demonstrates their confidence in their skills and I love it.
     On the flipside you could see how our girls can wear another team out.  From my spot on the other side I noticed so many instances in the first half of the second game where LFC players would pursue one of our girls for five yards or so and then just give up.  Again, it's about skillful ball control.  Keeping the ball tight under pressure is hard work but the payoff is that defending against that sort of control is even harder work and when Abby or Anna or Ava have pulled and spun and faked a few times in a row most defenders are just worn out and they back off.
     Jokes about score keeping aside, that one ended in a tie and I couldn't be happier with that.  We had them down for 3/4 of the game and the quality of our goals was spectacular including left footed shots from Olivia and Abby.  That gave Olivia a hat trick on the day and Abby had two total in that second game.  I'm really happy that Olivia has been able to jump in with the team with such grace.  Everyone played beautifully and I could isolate moments for every player showing their skillful play.  The thing is though that they all play so skillfully now that every touch on the ball is a highlight.  Seriously.  Coach Ben talked to the LFC director and she was just stunned at the quality of our players' skills.  That's how the Legends girls roll.
  
     The girls sounded a bit nervous before the start of the first game, asking me a couple of times how old the girls on the other team were.  I made the mistake of saying, "Oh, they're all just like you, you know, eight year olds."  "We're not all eight!" Ashley protested.  "Yeah, I'm not eight yet and Abby's not eight!"  Emily chimed in.  Then I remembered that Olivia isn't eight until June.  And of course Hailey just sort of glared at me.  "Okay", I said, "they're a little older."  "But you guys are pretty good.  I think you can handle it."  Their body language and expressions made it clear that they were grousing about the age difference just as a way to pass the time before the ref whistled them onto the field for kick-off.  The fact was that they were itching to play and they knew they'd be fine.   And were they ever.
    

Hat Trick for Ava in Great Season Closer for Girl Power

     Just a quick note on one of the best games I've ever seen the girls play.  We were short a couple of players today and we were facing the Flyers, one of the two toughest opponents in the league.  We played with no sub the entire game but my girls were skillful, tough and tireless.  Despite getting down 4-7 in the first half they managed to collect themselves and hold the Flyers to only one goal in the second half while pouring in another six goals themselves for a thrilling 10-8 win.
     Ava was the star of the game with an impressive hat trick of goals, every one of them hard earned.  Her touch on the ball was beautiful today and she was especially effective using her first touch to get well into space before anyone could close on her.  But if you only saw the goals she had then you missed the real brilliance in Ava's play today.  She broke away from the ball and got open in space for passes or looped back off the attack to cover in defense so many times that she had really gotten the other team's coaches' attention by the end of the game.  Late in the first half I could hear the two coaches on the other bench remarking on Ava, saying how amazing it was the way she was breaking so smartly off the ball and reacting to the run of play.  She looked like a seasoned pro, an attacking center back who is always annoyingly involved in the attack, giving the opposing defense one more player to mark.  Then just when the other team gets away on a break, there's Ava, exasperatingly goal-side of the ball when they thought they were in the clear.  She was really fantastically poised and in control the whole game and she brought that against a team that's capable of some very physical play.
     Everyone else on Girl Power felt that sort of physical pressure from the Flyers too.  High elbows, shirt grabbing, palms in the face and plenty of two-handed leverage on the walls.  I even saw a few "picks" being set!  But Girl Power just took it all in stride and put their faith in their skills.  That's what I always want to see from them.  Their skillfulness and their confidence in what they can do gives them a fairly cool attitude as a team and when they face pressure I want them to respond by being even cooler.  I was so proud of how they came out in the second half and played the way they know how to play.
     This game saw all of the girls picking up their field awareness and except for a few lapses late in the game they all were moving smartly around the field, attacking then covering, without being rooted in any one position.  Ava's the leader in this regard as I noted but we saw so much great total field play from everyone else too.  Zoe in particular brings a level of energy and toughness to protecting the goal and then combines that with a fearless willingness to dribble out rather than kicking.
    Ashley was playing with as good a touch on the ball as I've ever seen from her when facing a tough opponent.  She was getting her foot up on top of the ball for more control and softer touch and it paid off in goals and chances.  Eileen put on a clinic showing us all how you dribble out of trouble, including one amazing sequence where she took on four defenders in a row, all within a space of about ten square feet, beating them all to get into the open.
     Olivia was holding down the defensive duties for us in the first half, no instructions from me.  In the second half she stayed high in a striker position, floating up and back along the right side, again with no instruction from me.  The girls had simply agreed on their own at half time to rotate positions.  They figured it out.  Olivia found herself then in the position to have multiple shots on goal and put one of them in.
     Abby came out in the second half on fire and played with more of a punishing sort of intensity than we usually see from her.  Most games she's like Christen Press; effortless skill, cleanly zig-zagging, almost un-foulable.  Today she was like Abby Wambach; imperious with lightning quick finish.
     Finally there was Hailey, standing on her head for a near shut out in the second half.  And the punts!?  Wow!  She nearly booted one of them to the attacking line in the other team's half!  Her touch on the ball while in the field in the first half was fabulous and on one run she made just the most graceful little step over move, not so much a fake but as a sudden change of direction.  Just beautiful.
    It was great game technically but it was also a real statement for the team in terms of their heart and determination.  They were in a tough spot and they came out and imposed their will on the other team, staying true to their style of play.  Well done Girl Power.