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Health & Fitness

Reality Check edition

This past weekend, we had two “friendly” matches for the girls. A quick word on “friendly” matches… growing up we played “friendly” matches that were usually anything but friendly. We just called them scrimmages. I digress.

One of our coaching philosophies for the past couple of years is to schedule “friendly” games that provide the greatest possible challenge to the girls, pushing them outside their comfort zones. As a result we seek out the best teams – including premiere clubs – in order to challenge them as much as we can. We are certain this makes them better players and prepares them for the truly tough games down the road. For example, the past 2 Memorial Day weekends the Crushers played in the Needham Invitational tournament – as the only travel team in bracket filled with premiere soccer clubs from all over New England. In the Spring of 2013, they played 3 games vs. premiere teams in the Needham tournament, two other premiere teams in “friendly” matches and a friendly with the defending CT State Cup Champ. In those 6 games they won 2 and lost 4, but only surrendered 5 goals total in those 6 games. These teams of all-stars were often scoring 4 and 5 goals in a single game against other premiere teams.  There is no doubt that playing teams of the highest caliber pushes our team to excel – or it can provide a reality check. Their reality check came on Saturday vs. one of those premiere teams.

The first “friendly” of the weekend was against a premiere club here in CT, the Connecticut Football Club. The Crushers came out strong, dominating the first 15 -20 minutes and missing on a few glittering opportunities to score. The CFC’s constant pressure, aggressiveness and overall effort started to wear the team down. The game slowly deteriorated as our girls got stuck in 2nd or 3rd gear after a while and things got sloppy. It happens. A late goal was scored as a result of some poor coverage on a corner kick. The final was CFC 1 – Crushers 0. The lesson for them (and us as coaches) is that as fit and skilled as you think you are… someone out there is waiting in the grass for you – literally. Less than 100% performance isn’t going to cut it in that instance and the girls learned that Saturday. The questions after a game like that are “what did we learn?” and “how do we respond?”. They answered those questions on Sunday.

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Sunday’s “friendly” was vs. Agawam. The result was never in doubt. The Crushers got back on track with a 4-0 win. More importantly, many of the areas that had unspooled on Saturday came together nicely on Sunday. It wasn’t a perfect performance, far from it, but a vast improvement over Saturday.

The coaches look to these games to see where we need more focus. They help us to plan the next practice(s). The hunt for the league title starts when the regular season begins next weekend and somewhere out there, another snake waits in the grass for them… and when it rears its head, our job is to insure the girls will be better prepared to “Crush” it.

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