News for the Week of March 5, 2012

Program Notes for the Week of 3/5/2012:


Algarve Cup:
Behind the World Cup and the Olympics, probably the third most important international tournament for women is the Algarve Cup which is held annually in Portugal.  The field is by invitation only and contains the strongest countries in Women's soccer.  The U.S. squad posted wins over Denmark 5-0 and Norway 2-1, but lost to Japan today by a score of 1-0 which prevented them from going to the championship game.  Instead, they will play for third place against Sweden on Wednesday of this week.   Follow the action on http://www.ussoccer.com/


Soccer Site of the Week:
We are going to continue with some soccer parent related stuff and our highlighted site this week is:

http://www.miamisoccer.com/

This is the Miami University Women's soccer website and when you vist this site go to the "Redhawk Parents" tab. There you will find an interesting perspective on the role of parents in their daughter's soccer career. The opinions expressed on the Maimi site are not necessarily my opinion or the opinion of the coaching staff, but it is thought provoking and tries to get parents to put some perspective on their daughters soccer endeavors. In that respect it is worth reading and it gives some insight on how youth soccer is viewed on the collegiate level.
 
 
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 the final quality which is Pride - Coach K believes that pride means that everything we do has our own personal signature on it.  So we want to do it as well as we possibly can.  When you make a pass, it had better be good because it is your pass, it is the representation of you as a player, same with taking a shot or playing defense.  When everyone on the team believes that their own personal signature is on everything the team does - then you have the chance to be a great team.