The picture above is what would seem to be a goal celebration, but that’s our team’s goalie right behind them. It wasn’t a goal scoring celebration, it was a goal saving celebration. It highlights Lightning Storm and Lightning Strike’s growth this season as a group.
The U10 Select girls’ goals for the season were communication and role responsibilities. Certainly, we pushed them hard on learning new deceptive skills and began working on high touch ball movement work between players to level up their offensive and defensive awareness, but every drill in training we asked them to talk to one another, before each game we asked them to not only warm up their bodies, but their voices as well and in every game opportunity we pushed them to move up and down and back and forth across the field to stay with the direction of play and assume specific responsibilities when they were off the ball.
I am happy to say they nailed it.
The photo above captures how these girls have gone from watching the game, and thinking someone else will take care of a problem for them, to anticipating what’s going to happen and taking care of what they are owners of on the field. In this particular instance, a quick counter attack by the opposing team resulted in one defender moving to the corner to intercept the play while the other defender shifted to center along with the goalie who moved toward the post nearest the play.
The initial defender was beat so the second defender moved in to intercept, which left the middle open for a second attacker who moved into the space. It was a clear easy goal opportunity, which the attacker with the ball took and moved the ball to center to surprise the goalie who had her back to the play. The shot came off and you could hear the goal cheers starting, but out of nowhere the second defender had quickly turned and flew in to punch the ball right off the top of the goal line to the far side of the field and out of bounds. Cheers quickly switched from one side to the other.
This ownership of the space and awareness of the game is a critical leap for girls who last spring (4 ½ months ago) were content with the game primarily being just them and the ball for as long as they could have it and then once it was gone, well, it was up to the next person to have their chance.
We saw this ownership and awareness blossom all season long as players on both Storm and Strike began intuitively swapping space as play shifted allowing a back player, who had the ball moving toward them, to make quick counter attacks while the top player moved past them settled into a defensive role. It was noticed by quite a few opposing coaches because it was always as if we had an available defender on any change of possession.
This past weekend during our final season tournament Storm and Strike put it all on display and Coach David and I couldn't have been prouder of the results of the Lightning group and each player. It showcased to teams in upper divisions and in other clubs, who had not heard of us, what the future holds. When we return in the spring, we’ll enjoy the knowledge that when we show up in our colors, stake down our tent…and take up most of the sidelines with our cadre of supporters…those other teams and clubs will have already been talking about us.
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