Lessons of a Soccer Coach

Just as players and athletes must learn through practice and disppointment, a coach - in this case a soccer coach - must also learn his lessons the hard way.
*
The freshman-sophomore soccer season was short, only ten games. In a small league of six teams, we only had two chances against each team. In the Golden League, our league, there was no championship round of play for the freshman-sophomore teams so the best record equaled the championship. It came down to the last game, the tenth game of the soccer season, and we were playing for the best record in the Golden League.

I was the coach of the Quartz Hill Rebels. Leading a team of very talented young players and a few kids who were still trying to wrap their heads around the game, the hardest part of my job was maintaining a dispassionate demeanor.

The easiest thing as a soccer coach at that level is to lose control of your temper and get overly involved in the ebb and flow of the game. When you lose control of your temper, as a coach, you can also lose control of your team. That is what happened when my soccer team, the Quartz Hill Rebels faced Palmdale for the first time in the season.

We were having a terrifically difficult time scoring and I felt that my players were making poor passing decisions. Palmdale went up 1-0 before half-time. I steamed on the sidelines.

In the second half, Palmdale must have felt that they owned the moment, owned the game, because they began to subtly but tenaciously deny my players the ball. It was as if my soccer team had forgotten that you needed to have the ball to score.

That's when I started yelling.

One of my players, a captain, came to me and said, "You're embarrassing yourself." These may not have been his exact words, but the 15 year old kid was exactly right. I had lost myself in the moment and in the game and in doing so lost my composure. Though I felt that my team was embarrassing itself by playing poorly, it was really the coach, me, who was not doing what he was supposed to do.
If you have ever had the opportunity to coach or teach, then you will understand what kind of humbling moment this was for me. Me, a soccer coach and high school teacher, lost in a tantrum on the sidelines had to be coached by my player into a sense of decorum that had slipped away...

So I cooled off. We scored a goal and tied the game. Palmdale scored again near the end of the second half and won the game, handing us our first loss of the season.

The loss remained the only one for our team until the final match against - who else? - Palmdale.

The game was a night game and our season is a winter one out in California, so the teams played under the lights.

The Palmdale freshman-sophomore soccer team had already lost two games in the season and we had just the single loss. If we won, we would be the sole owners of the best record in Golden League soccer. If we lost, we would be tied for first and second with Palmdale.

It was exciting. The game was as high stakes as it could be for the team. A championship was on the line.

The players were loose on my side-line and so was I. Palmdale appeared geared up and nervous and they played that way. The air was cold enough to see your breath and both sides cupped their hands to their mouths in the moments when play stopped. But at each stop our team, my team, seemed to regroup and re-focus while Palmdale grew more passionate and nervous.

We were up two goals to one at the end of the first half. But the Palmdale team was a good soccer team. They tied the game early in the second half. Then we pulled away.

The parents of my players and the players friends made a ruckus in the stands, stamping their feet in the cold and cheering on their Quartx Hill Rebels.

I stood, happy to let the players play and to watch, perfectly in self-possession, on the brink of my first coaching championship, and my last.