Coach, do you remember when ...

As age continues to grow on me I have become aware the issues I deal with on a daily basis are shared by many others. In some remarkable fashion others I know seem to be going through similar struggles at the same time. We somehow reconnect and commiserate with while also drawing strength from one another. I am about to paraphrase a conversation I had with a former player last night about lessons taught, lessons learned and lessons carried over into the future. First a little background.

It was late spring of 2012. One of those blistering hot days in mid June where temperatures soared over 100 degrees and the winds were still.  Not ideal conditions to be playing soccer in, especially with only 11 healthy bodies for an 80 minute match. Two players were on the sidelines injured during previous matches that weekend.  We had no chance of winning the tournament and were closing out a less than satisfying season. Our team was good, but we just hadn't discovered how to play to peak potential.

"Coach, do you remember when you sat Jarod out and made us play with 10 and it was like 110 degrees out?"

Me:  Yes, I do. That became a turning point for our team.

"Coach, I was so mad at you that day.  The other team had like 5 subs and we didn't have any. Then you intentionally made us play a man down when Jarod was healthy and good to go. I didn't understand what you were doing back then.  I think I do now."

Me: Oh?  

"Yeah, our professor assigned us in groups for a project,  It was a big project to be presented in 3 different phases, There were six of us in our group and everyone worked hard together on it except this one girl. She was always doing her own thing and when it came time for our first presentation she insisted on being one of the presenters. It was a disaster. What she presented wasn't bad but she went rogue and it didn't fit with the rest. We got a C- overall and everyone kinda knew it was because of her."

Me: Yes, that type of thing happens in sports, in school, in life.  Do you remember those corny signs they used to have hung all over the schools?  Together Everyone Achieves More?  There is a very strong message contained therein. One that resonates with me daily.

"That's what I mean!  I mean, I was seriously ticked at you not allowing Jarod to play that day. I thought you hurt the team's effort that day. I got it. I mean, I understood why you did what you did, but still you punished the team because of Jarod not being a team player. I didn't understand that. It didn't make sense"

Me: And now?

"We were playing a man down with Jarod on the field because he wouldn't conform to the role and take care of his responsibilities, but our expectations remained that he should. We were frustrated with Jarod. We became frustrated with you, but when I think back now I realize we actually played better after you benched Jarod. We were down something like 0-3 when you benched Jarod and ended up losing 4-2 or something like that."

Me: That was quite the day wasn't it? (I chuckled out loud at this point)

"It really was. I'm still learning lessons from that day. "

Me: Oh, really?

"Yep, we decided to kick Lisa out of our project group."

Me: Oh?

Yeah, she will get the same grade as the rest of the group, but we aren't going to allow her to participate, especially as a presenter. She brought the rest of us down and we feel we're better off without her than we are with her. There was just so much drama and frustration whenever she was around."

Me: And what does your professor have to say about this development?

"We thought we would get in trouble, but he was actually cool with it. Surprised the hell out of me."

Me: Hmm.

"So, anyway, I wanted to let you know that I finally get it.  I understand why Jarod had to be benched that day.  I understand you were not only teaching him a lesson but there were important things for all of us to learn. You used to tell us all the time that it wasn't the 11 best players that mattered but the 11 who worked best together. Sometimes 10 is even greater than 11 when the 10 are working strong together towards a common goal.  That's what we are doing with the project group. We are stronger without her because she wasn't a team first player. We got an "A" on the second part of the project and I'm really confident about our third portion that we present tomorrow.  I just wanted to say thank you coach, for this and all the lessons you taught us over the years."

Me:  You're very welcome. May I ask a question?

"Yes, of course."

Me; Well, you know that Jarod eventually came around. He became a very good team player and teammate, what about this young lady your team dismissed from the group. How is she taking things?

"Well, she's kinda doing her own version of the project which is what she was doing anyway.  She's not getting graded on it but I think she feels like she should do the work?  I don't know."

Me: Does she seem grateful for the "A" grade she received for being part of the group?

"I don't know. She hasn't said anything. None of us has really talked to her since we told her she couldn't participate with the group."

Me: Then perhaps you still have lessons to learn from that day I benched Jarod?  Did we stop talking to him? Did we exclude him from activities? Or did Jarod remain a member of our group. We didn't give up on Jarod, did we?

"No"

Me: Maybe your group shouldn't be so quick to give up on this girl either?  Jarod became a respected and valued member of our team.  Think about this, would we have beaten the Croation Eagles if Jarod had not made the spectacular bangoo play just before half of that game?

" Yeah ... I see what you mean.  You're saying we should involve her.  Maybe not eliminate her activity but just censor it for the good of the group.  Maybe she will come around. If not now, then sometime in the future.  We might actually need her to contribute at some point."

Me: Just like Jarod contributed to our efforts in the years following "the incident."

"Ok, I see what you are saying. I've got more work to do. Thanks again, coach!"

**********

As it so happens I have two or three situations currently happening in my own life where the lessons of the  now fondly remembered "Jarod incident"  continue to bear fruit,  Coaches are sometimes tasked with making difficult decisions in difficult environments. I've made a lot of mistakes as a coach, I second guessed myself over the decision to sit Jarod that day. I didn't know if it was the "right" thing to do. I did not know for sure if it would work. To be honest, I wasn't even sure of the desired results.  I just knew we could not maintain the status quo if we wanted to perform to our peak ability. I took action. Perhaps drastic action. We were all fortunate that it worked out,  This is a success story, but there were many missteps that led to this success.  We don't get it right all the time and we need to be mindful of this when coaching / mentoring / teaching student athletes.  They don't get it right all the time either. We are the examples they will learn from.  When we err, acknowledge it for that is what we wish our players to do. When we are correct, be gracious and share the credit. We are all in this together and Together Everyone Achieves More.

  

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

One of the most difficult aspects of coaching is deciding on lineups. It is a subjective exercise based on the opinion of the head coach. As such, I don't know if a lineup can be judged to be right or wrong. Effective or ineffective might be a better scale for judging a lineup, but in the end it's really a matter of beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

A first year starting back allows over half his teams goals to be scored through his channel in a zonal defense.  The next year that starting back is moved to a new position for fear of a repeat sieve performance.

A first year starting back takes his place and allows over half of the goals scored against his team to come through his channel in the zonal defense. 

I Love Mistakes.

Regular followers of the blog know I struggled to frame my writings of Lance's senior season in a manner satisfactory to my own standards. A fair amount of you have expressed your disappointment in not being able to read those accounts.  No, I have not reconsidered and decided to publish them.  That does not mean they are far from my mind though.

My off season begins in August. Club season concludes in May and camp season concluded the second week of August this year. I spend my off season studying the game. I read a lot of books on the game and watch soccer every opportunity I get.  While I am not actively coaching during the fall it is the season of learning for me.  I love to learn and therefore LOVE mistakes.

I suppose a better description would be that I love to solve problems.  Mistakes occur when a problem encountered is inadequately addressed. The search for a better solution begins here. And this idea of making mistakes or inadequately solving the problems the game presents is at the heart of my struggles to write about Lance's senior season.

Mistakes are learning opportunities. 

Learning opportunities means there exists teaching opportunities and my love of mistakes is grounded in the teaching opportunities mistakes give rise to. Yes, I absolutely LOVE to teach.  This is probably why I like training better than the actually matches.  I enjoy the match. The match is the test of my teaching, my training of the team.  If we pass the test, good. I will identify areas of our play we can improve on.  If we fail the test, I must analyze where I erred in training the team and put things right.

Lance's senior season provided an unusually large number of opportunities to teach.  My frustration in writing of Lance's senior season stems for a lack of ready students to teach.  I started my 12th soccer book of the off season this evening and it has provided the catalyst to frame or channel my frustration in a positive direction outside the usual teaching of a team that I would normally share my knowledge with. The book, thus far, encapsulates the last 3-4 years of high school and club soccer for me. It has served to bring everything into proper perspective or at least a perspective I am comfortable in reviewing these soccer seasons from.  That in and of itself seems a bit oxymoronic because mistakes make us uncomfortable. So, I think what I am attempting to communicate is that I have learned and now have an audience, you, to share with. Perhaps even to teach although I suspect the simple act of sharing will suffice for me.

This story begins in the summer of 2010. Preseason of my first year as Head Coach of the Lima Central Catholic Women's Soccer program.  I had long been an advocate of the 1-4-4-2 formation. That was the formation of choice while I was an assistant coach at Shawnee and was also the formation we ran during my one year as an assistant at Botkins. Just as we had at those stops I based our system of play at LCC on the flat back four or zonal defense. As a head coach, I brought my own twists and tweaks to the system of play.

To uncover and fully understand the points I wish to make we will need to go back a few more years as it involves a then young man named Brian Boulter. That year there was debate over who would get the last varsity spot.  Brain was in the mix with two others.  In my mind Brian was the clear choice, but the head coach thought otherwise and Brian began the year on the JV team.  As was typical in those days, Shawnee struggled to score. The Indians won a lot of games, but they tended to be 1-0 affairs. Two goals were a surplus and three or more a luxury not often in evidence.  How to generate more offense was a constant theme of discussion among the coaching staff.  It was Brian Boulter who proved to be the answer.

Brian had good size, speed and a big leg.  His skill set was adequate. His knowledge of the game from the right back position was above average. He played his way onto the varsity by the end of the season and it was that big right leg that jump started the attack.  A standard play for Brian was to cross the ball from near the center line. Those crosses went against the grain of the defense and led to a lot of scoring opportunities.  This had been on my mind for several years and was about to come into play on both our boys club team and the LCC girls team.

I had begun emphasizing outside back play the previous spring, but with only a vague idea of what I wanted to see. As I recall, I tried a few different players at those positions with only a modicum of satisfaction from a coaching standpoint.  That August with LCC I played a young lady by the name of Ashley Hunt at the right back spot.  In many ways, she was a female version of Brian Boulter including have a big powerful leg. In fact, Ashley scored off the right flank from the center line!  I knew the outside back positions in the 1-4-4-2 were being under utilized in the attack. I just had not fully formulated in my own mind what their role needed to be.

Lucky for me, the 2010 World Cup was taking place that summer and I was glued to the TV every chance I got.  This was an important World Cup as it gave witness to the regeneration of the triangle midfield.  Now, the triangle midfield has been around in various forms and formations since the mid 1960's at least.  The great Johan Cruyff led Dutch teams built their Total Football 1-4-3-3 system of play around a triangle midfield.  What we began seeing in the qualifying rounds for the 2010 World Cup was a modification to the 1-4-3-3 formation and a true blossoming of total football.  Everyone had gotten caught up in Tiki Taka which is itself a modification of Total Football.

I would like to say I was ahead of the curve and on a local level I think that is true. In truth, I was stumbling and bumbling along as I sorted out my vision for the outside back positions in the 1-4-4-2.  I found the answer in watching our USWNT and USMNT play.  It seemed players like Brandi Chastain and Frankie Hedjuk, outside backs, were always making runs into the attacking third. The high school coaches I had worked with acknowledged this but thought the risk was too great. They feared not having enough players back to properly and securely contest an opponents counter attack were the outside backs to be allowed to "go up."

Not me.  I saw outside backs pushing forward and taking opposing forwards with them. When this occurred we would remain numbers up in our back line against the opponent.  Play early retreat keeping the ball in front of us and to deny negative space while we regained defensive shape and we should be fine.  And we were.  I had taken courses and symposiums from US National Team staff members and understood this to be true.  I was told it wouldn't work in high school soccer, but I felt it would... and it did!   Remarkably well as a matter of fact.

This is when I seriously begin developing roles and responsibilities for the outside backs to bring them fully into the attack. I began teaching cues for when to make a run and how to recognize which run to be made from the outside back positions. My son Lance was one of the guinea pigs and to his credit took to it immediately. 

There was just one slight problem... we were beginning to struggle to control center midfield in both club and at LCC with the girls team. The 2010 World Cup had seen the return of the 1-3-5-2 formation and variations of the1-4-3-3 formations - both utilize a midfield triangle.  I began to make the move to 3 center midfielders in the 2011 club season and continued with it during the fall LCC campaign.  With the club team we played more of a 1-4-5-1 referring to what we did as withdrawing a forward.  With LCC we played a 4-3-3 formation.  Neither formation or system was entirely satisfactory although both teams enjoyed unprecedented success.

Spring of 2012 saw us change the club formation to 1-4-1-4-1 with an inverted midfield triangle.  Well, sort of.  The players would tell you I give them  lot of freedom on the pitch.  I look at a formation as being the teams defensive shape. I don't care what the numerical arrangement is on offense as long as we cover the 4 elements of the game - penetration, depth, width and mobility.  Of, course, this means we really have to emphasize the transitional phases of play, especially going from attack to defending. Our solution was to press with the 3 closest to the ball while everyone else got behind the ball and into our team shape filling back to front regardless of a players designated position.  Total football.

I wasn't seeing the level of involvement in our attack from the outside backs that I wanted so we kept tinkering with formations until we settled on modifying the  1-4-5-1  into a 1-4-2-3-1 that morphed into a ... 1-2-3-4-1 when attacking.  Yes, we routinely threw 8 players into the attack. Goals galore! And we were not surrendering goals on defense either. It was beautiful to watch and if the players are to be believed an absolute thrill to play in. The significance in terms of outside back play was the center midfield triangle opened up the flanks for the outside midfielders and be extension the outside backs.

Granted, that club team was loaded with future college players, ODP, all-state, all-district, all-league players. To call them talented would be an understatement.  One day when I was discussing the 1-4-2-3-1 formation with my son's high school coach he stated to me the success I had with the club team could not be duplicated in high school soccer.  Hmm... we did it with an LCC team that reached the regional round of the OHSAA tournament.  And... what about our club "B" team from last spring whose talent level was that of an average high school team at best?  That "B" team beat the top two teams from the previous spring playing "my" system. 

Lance's high school coach was a doubter. He was wrong. He made mistakes. Many of them of the needless variety from my perspective. I so wanted to share with him the benefit of my experience. I was eager to teach, but there must be a receptive audience and that I did not have.  This was frustrating to me and that frustration seeped into my writings.  It was difficult to report objectively without editorializing ... or teaching... through those writings. 

Teach to win. Learn from losing.

 

When you want to win a game,

 

you have to teach.

 

When you lose a game,

 

you have to learn.

Traits of a Good Coach

A good coach knows results are not the ultimate measure of success in athletics.

Passion For The Game: Coaches need to love the sport they coach and be able to share their enthusiasm for their sport with the players entrusted to them. Their passion must transcend all aspects of the game - the teaching of technique and tactics, respect for the spirit of the game, opponents, officials and spectators and ensuring a positive environment of encouragement and empowerment.

Love of Players:  A coach needs to love working with the players of the age group he coaches. The relationship between coach and player should energize and motivate both parties. It is a relationship to be celebrated in the context of athletics and in the broader spectrum of life.

Knowledge: A coach must be a student of the game. Continuing education is not an option. The moment you think you know everything there is to know about the game is the point in time you should stop coaching.

The Ability to Teach: This is a companion to knowledge. A coach must have an ability to teach the basics fundamentals and deeper intricacies of the game. In order to do so the coach will need to recognize not all players learn in the same manner and be able to adapt lesson / practice plans to keep everyone on the same page.

Patience: This might be the most important trait a coach needs. On the soccer field the decisions players make can evoke emotions ranging from satisfaction to bewilderment to irritation. And then there are the off-the-field issues that can creep into the equation as well. Being able to maintain an even keel is of vital importance for a coach.

Tolerance: Is the companion of patience. Players bring the entire range of emotions with them to practice and the game. Getting them to be able to focus and concentrate on soccer for the time you have them can be a challenge. The ability to enable players to channel their energies in a focused and positive direction on the task at hand (soccer) is a key characteristic found in good coaches.

Acceptance: The third part of the coaching trinity along with Patience and Tolerance is Acceptance. Each player is an individual and each comes with varied potential, technical and tactical skill levels. Each player has value as an individual and as a member of your team. You must acknowledge and nurture that worth in order to spark passion for the sport and a desire to work on improving within each player.

Respect: Treat players with the respect you wish to be treated with. You may think the title of coach brings you respect, but you would be wrong.  Respect is not given or bestowed upon a coach. As a coach you must earn respect just as you expect players to earn your respect.

Motivation: I include motivation in this listing because we so often hear of its importance in athletics, but if we take care of Patience, Tolerance, Acceptance and Respect you will find little difficulty in motivating players... or people.

Sportsmanship:  I include sportsmanship much as I did motivation for if we are patient, tolerant, accepting and respectful it stands to reason we will also exhibit good sportsmanship.

In summation, coaching is about treating people as you would like to be treated while igniting a passion within them to become the best they can be as a player and teammate in the sport they have chosen to participate in. 

One of the tougher aspects of coaching.

Coaches in general often think they can "coach up" anyone and make them a contributing member of a team.  In most cases the object of their attention is the would be star with a horrible attitude.  This is not always the case though.  I myself am in the midst of trying to figure out how to coach up a young man who is good kid and loyal to our team.  Yet over the last 3 springs he has fallen behind his teammates in his development.

Players all develop at different rates but rarely does the disparity grow to this extent. "Mark" is basically the same player he was three seasons ago.  Individual player rankings of our team from years ago would have found Mark middle of the pack. Now, Mark is the last player on a 19 man roster.

I have the power to cut Mark from the team, but have been reluctant to do so for a number of reasons.  Family friend, attends the same high school as my son, he's very athletic and in a way he needs soccer and perhaps more specifically, this team.  This is one I am loath to give up on and so I continue to try.

One of the tougher aspects of coaching is recognizing when to let go of a favorite player.  I know Mark cannot compete with his current teammates. He lacks game vision to an extraordinary degree. This is undoubtedly related to the fact he learns differently than most.  I feel I have failed Mark as I have not discovered a way to properly teach him.  It is not that Mark is incapable of learning - he is a bright intelligent young man.  He's just not catching on as his teammates have and continue to do.

Keeping him with this team would be a disservice to his teammates especially if there is an expectation on Mark's part that he would receive playing time commensurate with that of his teammates.  Mark is the weak link on the pitch when he's in the game.

Now, in fairness, Mark is playing up an age group with this team.  When that decision was first made 4 years ago, this was appropriate for Mark.  As time has passed and his teammates have left him behind, this team is no longer appropriate for Mark to be on.  His teammates have been patient, understanding and helpful. Many have tried to mentor him and help him develop his game further with the same frustrating results I have had.  Mark's teammates appreciate he does not belong with this team and it's beginning to show as Mark continues to struggle with his play.

As coaches we know there is always that one player who, because their level of play is lacking, breakdown every exercise.  They are the one who always loses possession of the ball for their team often by self-inflicting pressure.  They are the one that opponents always seek to isolate and take advantage of because they lack self-discipline and will repeatedly stab or dive in effectively eliminating themselves from play.  Mark has become that player on this team.

Thankfully, there is another option for Mark. We will field a "B" team this next season.  Previous attempts to move Mark down to his own age group have been met with emotional responses. This is not unexpected, but the degree to which it manifested itself was.  Mark and his family essentially gave me an ultimatum that he either plays with our team or he won't be playing at all.  I am hopeful the idea of still playing up but doing so on the "B" team will be palatable to Mark and his family.  He needs to play and will not get that chance with the "A" team. With the "B" team he should play the majority of each match.

If Mark and his family are not agreeable to this, I will have to accept the challenge of their ultimatum and cut him from the team.  Even if that means he will not play soccer at all.  What it comes down to is the necessity of doing what is best for the team with an understanding that no one person is more important than the collective team. 

I am making one last attempt to bring Mark up to speed with this team.  If it is unsuccessful, I will move him to the "B" team and continue working with him in that setting.  I will need to take a step back from where that group from where the "A" team is now.  I am hopeful "re-taking" a season of soccer lessons will be enough to help Mark develop his game further.  As a coach, this is my "Hail Mary" attempt to reach Mark.  I pray that it works.