The Eureka Moment

By: Sean | April 14th, 2009

A new spring U-9 soccer season is underway and the local park is choked with boys and girls. The air is alive with whistle blasts, with shouts of encouragement, with juggled balls flying in every direction. Cones dot the pitch, Gatorade bottles and discarded warm-ups litter the sidelines, and two dozen or so parents are clustered by the adjacent playground. It had been almost five months since my daughter’s team, the West Coast Wolves, had played together in the fall and of the twelve that joined us for the final pizza party last November, eight returned. With one new addition to the roster, nine girls were energetically going through the start-of-practice warm-up.

“Flamingo stretch!” Nine young ladies balance on their leg and stretch their quads. “Bridge stretch!” The squad forms a circle of bridge/tunnel-like poses and stretch their calves. “Soccer dance!” The group starts to rapidly toe-touch the top of their balls with their cleats, working hard to keep the ball from rolling as they bound from foot to foot. All of these things the ladies do enthusiastically and with little reluctance, barring the discovery of a worm or “dog treasures”, which understandably throws the group into minor disarray…until Coach yells out: “Line up! Suicide sprints!”

You make little girls run suicide sprints? What kind of monster are you?! It really isn’t as menacing as it sounds…but I am sort of surprised that in our modern times we haven’t come up with a new name. Whatever. The entire team–players and coaches, too–all line up on the end line and do a set of wind sprints to the mid-line and back. It is a great conditioning exercise (for nine year olds and their 38 year old coaches!) and since so much of soccer is about sprinting and recovery, we’ve found it really helps get the girls fit and ready for games. However, when it is time to do them the collective reaction is an almost unanimous: “NOOOO!”

After a few runs, as the Wolves are catching their breaths, we ask them if they know why we make them do the sprints. “‘Cause you’re mean?!” someone cracked. We chuckle and then offer a teaching moment: “No, not because we are mean. We make you run these sprints because in a match, there will be a time when the other team gets the ball from you and starts running toward our goal. It is natural to lose the ball sometimes. It’s going to happen. But when you lose the ball, you need to be able to run back as fast as you can and help your goalkeeper stop the ball. Do you think it is fun to be the goalkeeper and have to stop the other team all by yourself?”

“NOOOO!” came the response.

“You’re right. It isn’t fun. So you need to be able to get back on defense just as fast as you run forward to try and score. Even if the game is almost over and you are super tired, everybody should always be ready to get back and help out. Girls, last sprint! Go!” This same teaching moment gets repeated about once a week as we encourage the girls for one last sprint. “I still think you’re mean!” a little voice pants as two dozen footfalls pound away to the center circle.

As a coach, you often repeat the same things over and over again, wondering if it is registering with your players. A lot of coaches spend most of the match yelling for their team to do this or do that…to stay spread out or to pass the ball. I do it, too. Every once in a while, however, when you stop yelling, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to realize the time spent in practice actually did account for something. You get that little Eureka Moment when you see something work just like you said it would. It happens in micro-soccer when a kid actually passes the ball–not just kicks the ball randomly and it hits another teammate, but purposely passes it to little Johnny. It happens in U8s or so when the kid playing goalkeeper for the first time reaches down and picks up the ball instead of kicking it away like a field player. And it can happen on your daughter’s squad when they realize the suicide sprints are more than just a coaching torture technique.

Case in point: The Wolves are comfortably ahead and spend much of the second half laying siege to the opposition goal. Not unlike a real wolfpack, they have gathered around the outside of the goal and pick off weak kicks that do not clear the box. This happens a few times and our defender migrates forward, too, so as not to miss out. Sure enough, the next keeper punt is a solid one and clears the box, bounces over the Wolves, and catches our defender by surprise. Their lone striker is off to the races. Before any of the coaches could yell, however, every single Wolf was racing back toward their goal, running as hard to get back on defense as they did to get forward. Three of the girls caught the striker before she got to our box, stripped her of the ball, and turned it around for another rally. That was only a week and a half ago and the only thing I remember about the match is five little girls chasing the striker down at the end of a match…just like we practiced. It wasn’t a game changing moment, but it was still pretty cool to see.

How about you, Weekend Warriors? When was the last time your team proved they really do get what you’re saying? Any Eureka Moments when your charges pleasantly surprised you? I’d love to hear about them.