8-30 Nike vs MTW U12 Boys Scrimmage

I was very happy that the coach of the West boys team, Simon, was able to get his boys together for the scrimmage today.  He has a very talented and quick team that won the U11 Boys State Tournament last summer that has played Mark's U12's twice now.  We are a lot bigger, stronger and faster than the boys but the boys are a little quicker and a little more creative.  I was hoping that our girls would be able to emulate the boy's creativity in their play during the game.

In the beginning of the game the boys took the play to us and we struggled to deal with their 2 forward and their 2 outside mids pushing up so high so quickly.  At times it looked like they had 4 forwards because every time the boy's had possession of the ball their outside mids would immediately go forward as far as they could.  The issue we were having was that our 3  center mids were just marking up on their 2 center mids leaving our defenders to go 4v4 with no cover.

What we needed to have happen was for our defensive mid to drop back and help to cut off any balls to their forwards and be close enough to them to double team if the ball went into them.  A pretty advanced concept for the girls but I wanted to get the basic idea in their head that we always want to have 1 extra player back to help out in case anyone gets beat.  The tricky part was for the defensive mid to not drop back too far and become a 5th defender and eliminating our ability to attack and keep the ball when we won possession.

After some very dangerous pressure from the boys and one close call we were able to start to play a little offense and good passing led to our first chance.

Ball Movement Leads To A Chance from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

 A great job of swinging the ball across the field quickly by the girls and a fantastic save by the goalie.

The main focus for the games today was to start to get all the girls to understand how I want them to play this year and this year we are placing a huge emphasis on being comfortable on the ball.  Our first chance was great and the girls were able to see how moving the ball quickly around the field can create chances.  We had a couple of times where we moved the ball very well throughout the game.

Good Passing from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

The key is for the girls to understand why they are passing the ball.  We don't want to keep the ball just for the sake of possession.  We are hoping that the girls will start to see how different passes open up different things on the field.  

The more that we kept passing the more chances we started to create like this one that saw Gaffer go through on a break away.

Gaffer 1st Break Away from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

During our "Take It To The Next Level" training earlier in the day with Rick he had talked about the fact that once you are able to coach yourself you become a better player because you can correct things and understand the why part of coaching quicker.  Gaffer had a couple of breakaways towards the end of our summer season that she had shot too early on and the ball was saved or went wide when she could have dribbled closer to the goal.  As soon as the ball was saved she turned over to the side line and told me "I should have dribbled in closer."  

It was great to hear her coach herself and it was even better when a couple of minutes later she was in the same situation thanks to some good ball movement and she did dribble in closer and put the ball in the upper left corner.

Gaffer's Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

The boys answered back with a great individual effort by their center midfielder, who was probably the best player on the field in the game, receive the throw in and proceed to torch 4 of our girls and roof the ball into the upper corner.

MTW 1st Goal-Nice Moves from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

Incredible footskills, calm and fun to watch.  

That goal was a couple of minutes before half time and it gave us a great talking point about how we want to play defense.  The goal of our defense is to "Make it predictable."  That means we don't want to dive in, we simply want to stay in front of the ball, force him one way and be close enough to block a shot.  

The girls had just seen the goal where their player had dribbled by 4 of us because everyone stabbed in to win the ball one by one.  I asked the girls if they thought he would have been able to dribble by all 4 of them if they were defending him at the same time.  They said, probably not.  This was great because now we can point back to this goal and remind the girls why we want to be patient and not dive in on tackles.

The boys opened the 2nd half scoring on a corner kick.

MTW 2nd Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

And we answered back with almost a replica of their corner kick goal with one of our own.  Kar Kar won the corner with some good dribbling.  Ricky sent the corner into a dangerous area and when the boys half cleared it to Fisco and she put the ball in the back of the net to tie the game up.

Our 2nd Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

We played really well during the rest of the game but their danger player got a bit of a lucky goal at the end of the game as Erika was not quite able to hold onto his long distance shot and it just crossed the goal line.  

MTW 3rd Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

A bit lucky, but good players get those kinds of breaks.

It was a fun game to watch and we hope to play them again in the future.