A Pre-season Message to the Team

(While I can't wait to see the new uniforms and will add an entry as soon as I see them (after all, this is a blog affiliated with Breakaway Fashions), the message below is one I send to the team at least once a year. Hopefully it gets better every year...)

You've heard it from me before and you'll hear it again, but it's really important. We coach the girls to learn the game in practice. What I mean by "learn" is understanding the goals, rules, and tactics of the game. The match is a chance for the girls to test their skills and see what we need to practice. In order for the girls to gain real understanding, they must:

• Experience soccer situations,
• Incorporate that experience into their personal model of the world,
• Figure out which new experiences can be used to make the model better,
• Try something new and build upon that model with another round of experience. (They're motivation to improve technical skills comes from this; they see the tactical need for a skill and realize they must practice that skill.)

Honestly, no amount of "directing" (i.e. words) from adults will do much to help them gain true understanding. Even more importantly, direction from adults almost always has the "feeling" of disapproval ("You weren't doing what you should have been doing.") This hurts their confidence and subsequently makes them less likely to try knew things because they want to avoid disapproval; this translates to a fear of failure. They should not fear failure because every mistake they make is a step closer to success. Success is not in the opposite direction as failure; success is on the other side of failure. We need to embrace their failures as long as it was their best effort (no excuses for quitting). You have to go through failure to reach success. Let these girls fail. Cheer them on for their great effort. Have fun and the kids will too. Let their tactical and technical blunders go unnoticed or if it was a brave effort, give them a congratulations for trying. So if your daughter seems out of position, that's ok; in her mind, it's the best place she could be. If there is a glaring weakness, we'll work on it in practice with a well designed game. If your daughter is dribbling instead of passing, congratulate her for her courage; the risks of dribbling the ball are far greater than passing it. (I found an interesting quote on this topic (see below) from arguably the best current player on the U.S. National Team.)

So before the game, during the game, and after the game, focus 3 things. They need to do only these 3 things to succeed on this team:

1. Try their hardest all the time.
2. Play with a smile.
3. Take care of their teammates (good sportsmanship).

From us, no criticism & no coaching. Just enjoy seeing them put forth their best effort.

"As a kid you need to touch the ball as much as you can. You should always be with the ball. You should have a feeling that wherever the ball is, you can do anything with it. No matter where it is, where it is on your body, how it's spinning, how it's coming at you, the speed it's coming at you, anything. You can learn the tactical side of the game later. It's amazing to me that people put so much emphasis on trying to be tactical and worry about winning when it doesn't matter when you're 12 years old. We're going to have big, strong, fast players. We're Americans, we're athletes. But if we never learn at an early age to be good on the ball, then it's just useless."
- Landon Donovan, USA World Cup hero, in Soccer America, July 2002