Sunday, November 1, 2009:

Well, we continued our poor play with a 0:2 loss to DePauw at Greencastle, Indiana. We played on perhaps to worst playing conditions I have ever seen. However, both teams The field was soft mud all over with a line of standing water down one side of the field. However, both teams had to play on it and from the outcome, they were better "mudders" than we were. Knowing this after a walk through on Saturday, we decided to alter our style of play and look to play balls in the air and long. At first it seemed to be working, then in the 9th minute, one of our defenders got turned on the left side and that player played a ball across to a player running and our defender marking him, did not react to that run and when he did he slipped in the mud and they scored. We could never find our rhythm and our passing continued to let us down. The score was still 0:1 at the half.

The 2nd half was more of the same...very poor play by us. Late in the game we made some offensive changes and in the 75th minute they struck again, only this time we scored the goal for them with an own goal. This is the first time in our history that we have not only had 2 own goals in one season, but in back to back games. In our last 9 games, we have played very poorly in all but the Trinity game. Somewhere along the way, we have lost the fire that had carried us in the first part of the season and it seems to have been replaced with just being satisfied with securing a winning season. We must re-kindle that spark to create our fire in ourselves immediately! We only have 2 weeks remaining in our season with just 3 games. This coming Friday, we play Colorado College at home at 6 PM and on Sunday, we play Austin College at 11 AM at home as well. We will end our season on Friday, November 13th against an very old rival, Berry College at home at 7 PM.

Now, why has our play dropped so drastically? I truly believe we have become quite complacent and satisfied with where we are at the moment. There is no burning desire to excel, only to maintain. We are continuing to play difficult soccer and not simple soccer. We do not know how to prepare our bodies to receive a ball, pass a ball or move off the ball. These are things that should have been learned a long time ago. What we are great at is being fancy and seeing how many step overs, cut backs and juggling we can do. This is not soccer the simple way. We must understand that in order to get better, we must play simple, not complicated and prepare our bodies appropriately to be able to receive and pass a ball with precision. In my opinion, the worst thing that has happened in our youth training is teaching the Coerver Method of ball skills and teaching kids how to win, without teaching them how to Think and prepare their bodies for the ball. We shall keep teaching and hopefully, the simple game will come through again, just like in the first part of the season.

See you next time and hopefully at our games this coming week-end.

Best regards,
Coach G somewhere on our way home in our bus