6:33am Saturday April 25th

Beep!....Beep!....Beep!

Why won't this alarm turn off!?...Oh wait thats the fire alarm going off. Thus began our weekend at the Region II Cup in Rockford, IL.

I needed to get up at 6:45am anyways but I was still bummed about missing 15 minutes of sleep. It's so funny how important sleep is in the morning versus at night...but anyways it was going to be a fun weekend of good soccer.

I spoke with Andy Kaasa about some techniques to get the boys fired up about more as I didnt like the starts we had been having to our games. I decided to test a morning jog and fun activity with my U12 group. We left for a jog at 7:30am in the area around the hotel, we also played a fun game called Bib tag that I really like, its quite fun and competitive. The boys then had breakfast. I gave up my room for them to eat breakfast in as the hotel wanted $125 a day for a conference room. I also had the breakfast planned in my room for the u11's but I would be off to the U12's game before they were up.

The U12's had a 9:30 kick against Team Chicago. They would end up winning 2-1 over a very disorganized U12 team that was attempting to play a 3-5-2. Quite convinced this would be our easiest game of the weekend I left satisfied with the win but not that happy about how we played. I walked across the complex to the U11's who were finishing their warm up at their field. I wasn't sure what we were going to be up against since we were playing a team from the Chicago Fire Academy. I was sure they would be good but how good? I guess that all depended on if we showed up to play or not.

The boys came out flying and put the Chicago Fire team under tons of pressure and they really didnt have many oppurtunites to think. We looked really good, we had several instances were we put 5..6..7 passes together with combinations mixed in. It was really nice soccer against a quality team. I need to start talking notes on these goals so I can give a recap. Basically we ended up winning 2-1 which was an ok result. I believe we deserved a goal or two more but I was really happy because we played so much better then we did in Des Moines.

We had a short break of less then 2 hours and we grabbed a quick lunch. All of the parents brought food items to the field and we had a little potluck style.

In all honesty I was really glad we had a short break in between games, the boys didnt seem tired and the break was not long enough to fully bring them down to a relaxed state. Our second game had us playing one of the better clubs in Wisconsin, Mequon United. They usually have quality teams and they didnt disappoint. I had a quick conversation with there coach prior to the game and was asking about the other team in our bracket...LCU...which was ranked #24 in the nation according to National soccer ranking.com.

We kick off against a team from Mequon United from the Milwaukee area. They were a good squad and from what I learned from the coach is that they usually play close games against the LCU team. They ran the majority of their offense through their very skilled #8. It seemed to me that the Mequon team did not expect us to be as good as we were as they really picked up the physical level of their play to counter act the skill and abilities of our group. We played a really good first half in a tight game with a quality team and we gave some specific instructions at the half as well as asking for more of the same from the boys. The refereeing in this game was quite poor and ended up being a difference maker. The final was 3-2 for them and the boys were very upset because we deserved the win but couldn't get the result we needed. Mike my asst for the weekend pointed something out as we walked through the lines at the end of the game. He said look at the Mequon players...they were not smiling or celebrating but wondering how they had just beaten a team of the of the quality that they just played.

What I have been really happy with since we came back from Milwaukee is the increase in intensity during practices and the focus the boys have had lately. Not to say they have not been motivated but something is different they seem hungry. Which is great because or training have been super productive. We have three scrimmages coming up before we had to the West Des Moines Premier Games in April so we will have a good gauge of were we are at and were we need to improve.

Game #1 vs Minnesota Thunder Jrs 98.e White 7-0 W

Game #2 vs Minnesota Thunder Jrs 99.s Blue 7-1 W

Game #3 vs Dakota Rev 5-0 W

Championship vs Dakota Rev 6-3 W

We play a couple of formations over the weekend to see what worked well, we tired 3-3-1, 2-4-1, and a 2-3-2. Each provided interesting situations for the boys to deal with. What I really like about this group is that we can put pretty much anyone anywhere and still see good soccer. One of the things I struggle with as a coach is discouraging players from going 1v1 and testing their individual skills. I understand that soccer is a team sport and I preach that but is having a team play two-three touch an entire game at this age really the best course of development? If they dont learn 1v1 skills now when will they? The scary part is when they are 13 or 14 and can balance their skills with passing very consistently what is going to hold them back from being successful? Right now (Soccer blast league, Futsal, scrimmages) what we are seeing is glimpses of what will be. The reason i bring this all up as this weekend was the first time I really saw us struggle with finding some sort of balance between our passing (team play) and our skills (individuals). We will continue to talk about this balance and how we create it and how it will benefit us.

I do not want to continue on a bad note as we did a lot of really good things all weekend. My personal favorite is the charater we showed in the final game. As a coach and especially coach of a team this age the team really feeds off of you. To my surprise we were down 2-1 going into half time and eventually we were down 3-1 at one point. The worst thing I could do at that point would be to panic and become negatively animated as this would have transferred over and reflect in the teams play. We had not played poorly up to this point but we did not play well. What I did see was a pick up of tempo and concentration by the boys. At some point in the last 15 minutes of the game they realized that a team effort was really need at this point and they started to play some of the better soccer that they had played all weekend. The only adjustment I made was a small one, I moved us into a more attacking formation and it really paid off with 4 or 5 unanswered goals in a very short period. Sometimes I tend to stay quite on the sidelines and coach the group on the bench more then the players on the field, however there are some instances were that is opposite. I want the boys to be able to play and not rely on me for the answers, if they can figure out how to apply what we work on in practice on their own it will only benefit them more in the long run. So all I did was make a change they adapted and they figured out how to play within it.

Overall it was good to get some 8v8 games in to shake off the rust and it also gave some new insight to our pressing issues as a group. Looking forward to heading to the indoor tournament in Milwaukee on the 27th through the 1st.

We played our age group for the NSC tournament because we wanted to try and have success as we have been struggling in our league. Our tournament bracket did not feature any really strong teams so I was quite confident going in to the tournament. I was hoping we would match up with one of the teams that played in the fall harvest fest finals, i have been wanting to test the boys against the other top teams in the state. We ended up winning the tournament even though we did not play that well in the final game. We really worked on movement off the ball and how to find space with those movements. We talked a lot about moving to receive a pass but also moving to create space for a team mate. The discussions really paid off as we played some very attractive soccer, especially in the bracket games. We lacked the form we had in the pervious games when we played in the final, never less the team we played never really threatened us and a 4-1 score line was the result. Pleased that we played some really nice soccer for 3 out of the 4 games but we must improve and be able to play great soccer at anytime.

The second tournament at the Soccer Blast was a different story. The U11/U12 age group is put together for this tournament so i was expecting us to play mostly U12 teams. When the schedule was released I was proved right as we played two U12 teams and one U11 team. the game i was looking forward to the most was the U11 game because it was against Minneapolis United who won the fall harvest fest. We would finally get our chance to test against one of the best. Our first two games were a struggle as we played two of the top U12 teams from our Saturday morning league. We did well and held our own but in the end could not find a way to win. I am glad we get to play against U12's on a regular basis as it only helps us, this especially shows when we play teams of our age. The game against MU was a good one, a good test for us. We were able to win 4-1 and controlled most of the game and really set the tone. MU had a few good players but the team never really looked uncomfortable while we played them.

Our last event of the winter break was a scrimmage against the U11 Dakota Rev team. I feel like this team is in the top ten in the state so i thought this would be another good stepping stone for us. We started out a little flat, even with my consistent reminder on how we should set the tone in the first 5 minutes and look to make a statement. A small error in judgement led to a early Dakota Rev goal that was against the run of play. The goal actually turned out to be the worst thing they could have done as we fully woke up and took over play completely. The game finished up quite heavily in our favor. My favorite thing about this team is that we can put anybody pretty much any where and still play well. I believe this has a lot to do with the way we play in training, futsal, and indoor league games as we try and give each player the opportunity to play almost all the positions.  It was evident late in the game as we began to move players around a lot more just to kind of see what would happen.

Tuesday again brought the challenge of having 10 boys with tons of energy and not a ton of space to work it off in. We jump right into some "Coerver" style drills will tons of 1v1 moves and plenty of reps for everybody. The boys were full of energy but despite that they were very sharp and did very well with the combination moves that we tried. After about 30 minutes we moved into another gym for speed and agility training. This is not my forte but I am adequate enough at it to do a session. We worked on changing direction at various speeds and lots of fast foot work. It went well enough and was glad that Tim was in the gym to help out since I had both the blue and white teams for this part. Again after 30 minutes or so we moved back in to the large gym to scrimmage for the last 30 minutes. We started off with an inter team scrimmage of just the blue group, after 10 minutes or so Matt came over and wanted to switch one of my groups with one of his which was fine, it was also one of the first times a majority blue team played a majority white team since the split in October. We were out worked from the beginning and we made some silly mistakes as well as some unforced errors. This did not look my group from the past Sunday. I dont want so make it sound like we did everything wrong as we made several smart passes and had glimpses of great play along with what we didnt do well. I was very indifferent overall about the session because we were sharp to start but didnt finish well. Which brings me to my continuation of above...I have to continue to remind myself that even though we can look fantastic sometimes that we are still a very young team and have a lot of room to grow and improve and there will be many bumps along the way to consistency.

On Saturday we had training at Rosemount. This went pretty well. Trying to teach 1st and 2nd defender concepts to U11's is difficult because for most it is their first exposure to the ideas. They grasped the 1st defender concepts quickly and by the time we moved the 2v1's I was pretty satisfied with their progress since I was able to see some level of consistency. All I am going to say about the introduction of the 2nd defender concepts was that I introduced it and we are going to need to work on it several more times before we even think about going further. We struggled in the scrimmage but again the flashes were there.

On Sunday we played our weekly Soccer Blast league game. This week we played my U12 team. This is always an interesting situation as I want both teams to do well. They U11's were pretty out matched on the physical and speed aspects but technical skills is were we could hang with them. I stressed posession, team work, and the need to play both ways. Never less we ended up losing, but if we could I would want to play teams like that every weekend. We pushed our Futsal back to later in the afternoon since the indoor game was at 1pm. For the second weekend in a row we had a great session of Futsal. At this session I had them play with several different restrictions. We have played two touch max before and have always done pretty well at it. I introduced a new restriction this weekend where the player in possession cannot pass back to player who passed it to them. We had mixed results with this but overall I was very satisfied with their play. For the last 35 minutes we played Futsal with the U12.e girls white team. The boys enjoyed mixing up the teams and the standard of play did not drop even though they were playing with people they have never played with before. It was fun and I hope we get a chance to do that again.

On Saturday we looked to improve on our indoor league play as we lost the weekend prior and we were not sharp and the play lacked enthusiasm. The team rarely plays teams its own age and is relatively unknown to its own age group. So when we get a chance to play a team our own age the boys get pretty excited. This weekend we played a U11 team from Bloomington. I have known of this team for awhile as my U10 indoor team from last year would consistently play them for the championship. Going in to the game I knew we would be the stronger team and this proved correct since we carried play for the majority of the game. We ended up winning 16-6, typically in these games when we get up by a good number I try to find ways to challenge the boys in the game. For this game we tried to score goals off of headers. It is always interesting to watch them try to adapt to these challenges.

On Sunday we were very very sharp and looked like the team I know we can be. We will occasionally invite teams to come in and play Futsal against us. This weekend we invited the EP U11 team that was the runner up in the fall state tournament to MPLS united. Sundays are always a challenge for me as my U12 team plays 1pm indoor games in Burnsville and then I must get to Woodbury by 2:20pm for Futsal/training with the U11's. Since I wanted to be on time for Futsal this week I left the indoor game early. Well 40 minutes and 4 snowplows and 2 state troopers later I was able to make it late to start of the scrimmage, good thing I left early. We played very well against the EP team and we carried play but were not able to finish. There was a lot of great combination play and we were very confident in 1v1 situations. We ended up 2-2 after 35 minutes of play. A disappointing result for how we played but none the less it was great to see the boys play so well. After the 35 minutes the white team came in and scrimmaged while we moved to the small gym for a possession activity which I was so happy with that after 10 minutes I stopped it and we finished with a 4v4 + 1 scrimmage. Our creative and clinical play carried into the scrimmage. At the end of training I realized we had just played 70 minutes of consistent soccer for the first time since I have taken over the team. We have come close before but have had times were a 5 minute lapse has really hurt us. I am hoping we can carry this into next weekend especially with the game heavy (2 holiday tournaments and a scrimmage) end of the month that we have.