Midfield and Forward Combinations To Goal &Scrimmage vs U16's and Gophers: 5/11

Evan led the training yesterday because I was with the 16's in their second State Cup game.  They won and are in control of their group after their first two games.

Training Today

I. Juggling/Ball Striking With One Touch Back

II. Defending Corner Kicks

A little refresher to make sure we are sharp this weekend.  We have only faced 2 corner kicks in State cup and neither of them made it past our first defender so I wanted to make sure the girls knew their responsibilities in case we have to defend any of these in our semi final game.

III. 6v4 Pattern Play: Midfield and Forward Combinations 

I wanted to really start to build on the movement between our midfielders and forwards today.  I wanted to give the girls lots of repetitions with some different patterns, but I wanted to have defenders involved so they would see the picture that I wanted.  In order to do this I decided to play 6v4 to Goal with the patterns.

Set Up

• 4 Red Defenders and a Goalie
• 6 Blue Attackers (2 Fwds, 4 Mids)

Procedure

• Attackers play through a set pattern.  In this example it is CM-LM-Fwd-LM 
• The defenders allow the pattern to happen but they work hard to make the picture realistic for the attackers.  In this scenario the RD on Red would go out to pressure Blue's LM when she receives the ball and the give and go would be done around her.
• After the pattern is completed (in this case the give and go gets completed and the LM has the ball) we go live to goal with the defenders trying to win the ball.

Make It Competitive

• 1 point for a shot on goal
• 3 point for a goal
• Thinking about it now I should have added a bonus point if the pattern was done well

We went through 3 different patterns.

Go Live With It

To end the exercise the defenders were live from the beginning.  The attackers had to read the defense and pick the correct pattern to use.  

IV. Scrimmage vs U16 Blues and Gophers

For the last 25 minutes of training we scrimmaged the 16 Blues.  The 16's had 3 current Gopher players playing with them today.  The Gophers really raised the level of their play.  AP from the 16's scored a great header goal in the run of play.  The 13's didn't back down from the older girls and Carly took out one of the Gophers on a tackle.  It was definitely a foul but I love to see how hard the girls play.  Jazzy also had a sweet nutmeg in the game. Eckstrom looks amused while surrounded by the 13's