News for the Week of Feb. 27, 2012

Program Notes for the Week of 2/27/2012:

The Game that Wouldn't End:
Here is an unusual bit of soccer news from a San Diego area boys high school game played last week.  A two-day old high school soccer playoff match between Bishop's of La Jolla and San Diego Crawford in the San Diego Section finally ended Wednesday afternoon when Matt Harris scored on the game's 49th penalty kick, giving Bishop's the victory when Crawford missed a final try.

The Division 4 playoff match began on Tuesday and was halted because of darkness after 21 rounds of penalty kicks. Regulation had ended in a 3-3 tie.

The coaches wanted to start the game from the beginning on Wednesday, but Bishop's Coach Malcolm Tovey said the San Diego Section decided to resume the match from where it left off when darkness forced the halt.

"I think all of us were so nervous after every [penalty] kick," Harris said. "Any kick could have been the end. All of us were holding our breath."

There was so much drama and excitement over the two days.  "It was unbelievable," Tovey said.  Added Harris: "It was definitely something I've never heard of or experienced before."

By way of comparison, what was the longest game in Ohio soccer history? The answer is 204 minutes - almost 3 1/2 hours (25 OTs) - when Centerville 2 defeated Dayton Carroll 1 in 1977 before penalty kicks were introduced.  The most penalty kicks were 28 or 14 rounds before Powell Olentangy Liberty beat Beavercreek just this past season.  These were both boys games as longest games stats haven't been kept for girls games so far.


Soccer Site of the Week:
This week we will feature an interesting article from Science Daily about what triggers anger in soccer parents.  See the article at:

Soccer Parents: Why They Rage

Most of us have gotten mad at one point or another at our kids soccer games and this article might help to bring some perspective to the situation.


Shorty Sez:
We continue to feature the teamwork philosophies from Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski who is a pre-eminent expert on leadership and teambuilding. This week we are continuing with the concept of the fist to reflect upon is as follows:

Coach K sees his team as the five fingers on a hand. When the fingers fit together, they create a powerful fist. When fingers are outstretched, they are on their own and can be easily broken by a fist. So it is with a team - if they play together and unite with a common goal they become like a fist which can always defeat individual fingers which are operating on their own. A great team possesses five qualities - Communication, Trust, Collective Responsibility, Caring, and Pride. These can also be thought of as individual fingers and when all five come together, they can form a fist which cannot be beaten.

This week we look at Caring - Coach K believes that nothing demonstrates that you care about people more than spending personal time with them.  The more it's a one-on-one encounter, the better.  The concept of caring; however, is not singular in description.  It's more than "I care about you as a person." It's also about "I care about the job I'm doing on the field."  It's caring about the individual, caring about the team, caring about the team's performance, caring about high performance, about excellence.  And it's caring about winning - about being the best you can be.

That kind of caring spurs people to take action.  It causes people to work harder - "I'm going to do this because I care about my job and because I care about the people I work with."   In no small way, caring can be a powerful motivational factor on any team.