Scrimmage vs U13 Mix Team Saturday 9-29

A few players, including Shannon Higgins, Carla Werden, and Walker have achieved a status where they are referred to by Dorrance as Coach.  With UNC ahead 2-1 during a brief break in the 2001 NCAA semifinal, Dorrance was warning his team that they needed to keep playing aggressively when he was suddenly interrupted by Walker, who said, "Hey, y'all, we're going to keep running until we pass out and we're going to win this frigging game!"

Says Dorrance: "At that moment I was thinking, 'This is the ultimate evolution.  I'm just an appendage here.'  But that's what you love.  It was a defining moment.  That's why I should never be running the team.  My hand is on the tiller, but it's a soft hand.  Every once in a while they'll make a mistake and you're there to help correct it, but they are running the ship."

From The Man Watching- A Biography of Anson Dorrance, the Unlikely Architect of the Greatest College Sports Dynasty Ever

One of the reasons I love coaching for Bangu so much, is that the kids in the club want to play all the time.  On Tuesday I sent out an email to our U13 Blue and White teams asking them who wanted to play on Saturday morning.  I knew both groups had training later in the day, but I wanted to get the 12's another game in before we go to the Sockers Event.  With in a couple of hours I had 8 girls committed to playing and ended up with 12 of the U13 group.

My goal for the scrimmage was for the girls to continue their work on their ball movement and being comfortable on the ball.  Not going 100mph forward every time.  It is nice to play against older teams in our club because they; force us to play quick, play to win, and they make us better all the time.  It is a great environment.

The first 20 minutes of the scrimmage it seemed as if the girls had not learned anything during the last three weeks of training.  We were forcing the ball forward every time we got it.  I was also disheartened by the fact that no one on the field seemed to care that we were not playing well.  At that point I subbed in Blitz who is recovering from a bad bout of osgood schlaaters and has been taking it easy and letting her knees take some time off.  Blitz is competitive.  Even though her mobility was limited she immediately let her teammates know that it was not ok for them to give a poor effort.  Things changed and we looked good for the rest of the half.  We moved the ball well and players started to get creative with the ball at their feet.

At half time I addressed the fact that as much as I want the girls to always play well and hold them selves to a high standard of play, it does not matter.  What matters is that the girls, themselves, want to play well and hold themselves accountable for a high level of play.  The drive has to come from them.  I told them that I don't control how well this team does, it is entirely up to them.  I will give them direction and advice.  What they decide to do with that direction and advice will determine how well we do.

The second half was great.  We started consistently stringing 5-6 passes together and one time we put together 15 passes.  The best part of this, was that the girls weren't just passing for the sake of passing.  They were looking for openings and moving the ball from one side to the next.  It was very impressive. 

The U13's have some very good players and they scored a handful of goals on us during the game and the score was probably 5-0.  But the girls were focussed on the fact that our goal for the day was to improve our ball movement and creativity, which they did.  They did not get down when the 13's scored and they were having a great time seeing how well they could move the ball on such a fast team.

I left the game very happy about our performance.  I hope that we can continue to improve on this as we go into the Sockers Event in two weeks.  I hope the girls, and parents, realize that we may take some lumps as we learn to play this style of soccer because it is much tougher to keep the ball and be creative, than to simply boot the ball down the field and chase after it.  We definitely have some athletes who can thrive in this bootball style of play, and we would be pretty successful until we play a team who is just as athletic as us and they force us to be creative.  By that point it would be too difficult to change our ways and we will get beat.  See the USA vs Brasil semi final game of WWC 07 for the perfect example of this.