Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.- Lou Holtz
We do a lot of our weekend training at McMurray and it is typically a very busy place with the latino leagues and the football leagues that go on each weekend. Today as I was going to set up there was a youth football game going on on our field. About 5 minutes before we were going to have the field the whistle blew to signal the end of the game I thought. Then I saw that the teams were not shaking hands and that it was only half time. Crap. While we did have the field starting in 5 minutes we weren't going to tell the football teams to get off the field so we went off to a side area to do our technical work and I hoped that the game would be finished up within 35 minutes.
Stuff like this happens about once per month and each time I try to find a solution to how we can deal with the problem and immediately go with it so the girls don't react negatively. It is important that we show them how to deal with minor setbacks like this without dwelling on the fact that things are not perfect. The girls didn't think twice as they followed me over to the side of the field and we began our training.
I. Juggling
II. First Touch
III. Dribbling
I was hoping that the football game would be done by this time but it had not ended so we went ahead with our 3v3 game on a rough area off to the side of the field. We played the game below but we did it without goalies and had smaller goal areas for the girls to score in.
The big focus that I wanted was for them to go quickly but still enjoy having the ball and when they got into trouble to use skill to get out of it.
The football game ended up just before we were finishing with our 3v3 activity so we were able to get 30 minutes out on the field which we used to play 7v7.
If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do. -Samuel Butler
I. Juggling
II. 1st Touch
III. Individual Moves
IV. 2v2 To Endlines
We wanted to build on the session we did last Tuesday where we focussed on the girls doing moves and enjoying having the ball so today we did the same game but we made it 2v2.
I like doing 1v1's just fine, but I really like 2v1's and 2v2's because it forces the player with the ball to have to choose whether to dribble or pass. In 1v1's there is no choice in what to do, you have to dribble. I want the girls to be comfortable making different choices on the ball and a big challenge is to get them to realize that they don't have to pass just because they have a teammate with them. I want the girls to start to use their teammate's runs as dummy runs and decoys part of the time. We are also still trying to get the girls to really try the moves and use them all the time.
The same time that we had the 2v2's going on Mark took 8 of the girls at a time and continued to work on their moves off to the side.
The final scrimmage of the day pitted the Swoosh group against our top U12 girls team. It had been a long day for the girls with constant activity since they had arrived this morning at 7:45am and the kick off for this game was going to be about 4:15pm. I didn't know how the long day would affect the girls but they came out on fire.
We were able to get on the board shortly after that movement when in the 3rd minute Carly scored a great goal by sliding in to finish Jordy's cross with a quick near post run.
We were on the board again just 4 minutes later when some hard work by Carly forced a turn over deep in the U12's end as Erin (LD) had moved up with the play and put in a dangerous cross that the U12's didn't deal with cleanly and Kenzie was there to power through 2 defenders and calmly slot the ball home.
After that chance we were able to go down the field and score our 3rd goal of the match. I liked this goal because Jazzy (RCD) won the ball, didn't just boot it up field, and Mack (LCD) our other center defender made a simple run forward to get the ball from her and we started the movement up field under control but with speed.
Bella's pressure led to another missed clear for the 12's and she did the rest with a great fake shot at the top of the box and another calm finish.
We scored our 4th goal of the opening 20 minutes, my favorite goal of the day, with our best ball movement of the half. We started with a throw in, swung the ball through our defenders, again they were calm on the ball, to our far forward who was checking back into space. found our center mid who in turn found Jenni streaking down the middle. As Jenni received the ball with runners streaking down the outsides I shouted from the side line for her to take on the center defender 1v1 since our runners had created a huge gap between their defenders. Jenni put a quick speed move on their center defender and roofed the ball into the top of the net.
This was the first goal that the U12's didn't help us on.
Our 5th goal of the half was Carly's second. Jordy played in a cross that their goalie had trouble hanging onto and Carly was calm and composed with the finish.
As the half time whistle blew I was a bit shocked that we were up 5-0 as I expected a pretty close game, but our girls were playing great and we were finishing a majority of our chances.
At half time I told the girls that the quick ball movement was the main contributer to our success and we needed to keep it up for the rest of the game. I put the restriction on the girls that they had to score with a 1 touch finish for the second half as I wanted to see how well we could get numbers forward and then get in crosses. The last thing I said to the girls was that the most important number on the score board was the 0 and reminded them that no matter what the score is you always take pride in playing good defense. (The girls who were at Regionals last year acknowledged the importance as it had cost Eclipse their place in the semi finals.)
The second half was a fun half to watch. Our girls moved the ball around well but we were unable to do much with the 1 touch finishing as we were not thinking ahead enough to create good one touch shots. The U12's took the half to showcase their ball skills with Mark challenging them to do a move every time they could.
The best move of the half was a slap cut by Mad Dog.
It was a great day of soccer, team building, and take it to the next level training that we are looking to make a permanent part of our fall in the year's to come.
If you are interested in having your team come up and partake in this event please contact Mark or myself as we are looking to expand the event for next year.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 03:00PM 
The football game ended up just before we were finishing with our 3v3 activity so we were able to get 30 minutes out on the field which we used to play 7v7.