Footbal Au Printemps: Jan into Feb

Just back from conditioning @ the park district field house we sometimes condition at. It went well. We had most of varsity - a few didn't show, but most did. Most worryingly for me is that my star form last year - who I have giant plans for - is missing. By now, the serious girls have been showing up mostly. She has showed up only once. We are still well in advance of the season - but not so far off is the first game (16 March).

So - impressions? Three for now -wait -a clean captains Five.

One:

Is spectacular - and it's something I have said before. These girls are just so much better than they were last year. I have giant plans - win our conference and thus be promoted to the Premier Division, win the city playoffs, and finally win some hardware in the State Playoffs. With this team, I believe we can win the conference, advance @ least to the final four of the city - and hope that our Section is as weak as last year so we can win @ least the Region. It's heady stuff, but these are the goals. And develop the JV for next year. But these girls are so much better than they were last year that I think we can actually attack our goals and try to get them. We have started early - that is important.

Second:
Track!! I am also now a track coach. I actually was on track in hs - really! - but I remember nothing. So - to the soccer conditioning books I go. The most important -in this regard - is Anson Dorrance's Vision of a Champion. It seems that in conditioning for soccer, the type of workouts one should conduct should mimic the playing conditions of the game - lots of hard hard hard fast running, interspersed by ....... resting periods. I think the %'s are 70% of the game players are 'recovering' . So, my plans for now are thus:

-1/2m warm up jog,

-stretching,
-20-40-60-80-100-120 runs, all @ full explosive pace, running through the endline, w/ full rest /recover periods.
-'suicides'= 5-10-15-20-25 yd lines, each player bursts to the 5 and back then to the 10, etc etc etc....

For now, we will run this schedule - and as the year and the year goes by i will add and tweak and subtract and try to get it best for three kids.

Three:

Arnold! The girls have expressed and interest in lifting weights. Shit - I know nothing about it -well, about how it would best benefit the girls and how it should be done safely. The idea was to email Jackson the pages of a soccer conditioning book along w/ pics of our weight room's equipment so he could make suggestions. (I have a camera in my pocket as we write.)

Four:

Connexions - as in, who is connected to who and who gets along w/ who. And in particular..... my two captains. In many ways, my team is an inherited one. I was the JV coach last year, and when I inherited the program as a whole, I instantly promoted three JV girls to Varsity - but the rest of the team were last years returning varsity. So - since these girls have been playing to-gether for three years, they have more or less set positions - and they have been playing them w/ the other girls for these last few years. So -it is almost impossible for me to come in and say "This This and This..." because they are very used to the way it has been. And the deal is is that I really do not want ot actually switch these girls around - it's a good setup and I'm not a fool. But there is that resistance that I have to deal with.

However, also set is the strange alliance between my two captains. One was a captain from last year (along w/ her sister). very hard to get a read on this girl. She wants best for her team - but is also very insistent on 'what she knows is best' .. Sorta like me. And then there is Sweeper. I have written about her before. Deeply respected by her teammates, the moral leader - but I also know that she and the other captain are not 100% eye to eye. Don't get me wrong - they totally get along - but there is friction. Just how much??

Five:

Money. I know it was the bug a boo last week, but several kool items have come up. One is that I finally checked the girls soccer $$ in the schools account. Now I'd already "Spent" about $500 paying for two non conference games and buses - and was thinking we had ZERO in the fund and that I would have to pay the $500 oyut of my pocket. But guess what? We got it. Shoot, we can even go heavy after that one Catholic school and schedule them, and then ..... go after another to try for a last game on the docket. Then I found out how much I'm making for the season. I hadn't realised that a head coach gets paid ........ well, I'm sure not anywhere near as , say, the St. Rita football coach or the New Treir badminton coach* - but shit - I'm getting a hell of a lot more than I thought. It's a lot. Well, in context. But seriously, it's like I found out i was getting a raise. And the last $$ bit is that I now have the power to not only hire one person - I have the power to HIRE TWO PEOPLE to assist me. Wow - this is kool. I understand that, say, Dagwood hired Rocky, and that ....well, whatever - some people have that ability. And my ability is only to hand out shortterm 2m jobs that'ss net about $1000 each. But to be able to reward people for their hard work. Skye is my first choice to coach the Freshman team - she graduated two years ago but always showed up to practice and games to see her old teamamtes. Since she wa salway there, I told her @ beginning of the year hey, come and practice w/ us ... Now she knows I ams erious and has been showing up - but she told me someone else told her that she couldn't hold a job whe alreayd ahs @ the school AND a coaching job. I asked people in the library, and they said bullshit. I have to talk to one of the 'important' people to see on this matter. For many reason sit would be good to have Skye on staff.

But - my schools BBall team, inthe first round of the playoff, are calling me rite now. 4pm tipoff.

.........................................................

*= I bring up New Trier all the time not because y went there, but because it is a class school in so many ways and thus capable of a lot - in this context, it's as rich as fuck and the compensation for coaches I'm sure is 3-4x what i get - but could it be??).