08/22/2025
Week #1 complete with Sporting! Check out what we did today & the purpose… I would say the girls did a pretty good job 🤪
“Name & Toss”
Each team circled up & started with one ball. The girl with the ball had to say her name, who she is passing the ball to, and a name of a restaurant. It started out easy until I added another ball & to finish, a third ball. As you could probably imagine, it got chaotic… 😂 (shhhh! that’s the point!)
When we came back together, I asked them if that game was easy or hard? They all screamed “SO HARD!” I asked them why it was hard - here are some answers: “It created so much chaos” • “It was hard to remember what we were supposed to say” • “It was hard to think of a restaurant” • “There was just too much going on that you had to pay attention to” … I then asked them what happened when pressure rose? They answered “We couldn’t focus on what we were supposed to do.”
BINGO!!!! 🙌🏼🏆
The pressure, stress, overthinking & speed made the girls lose focus. Sounds familiar to a real game, right? When distractions like those listed occur, our focus shifts (& not for the good). Now is when we introduced our reset routine:
1. Breathe - Take one intentional breath
2. Release - LITERALLY shake it off. Shake your hands and/or feet or imagine you dropping the mistake/distraction.
3. Refocus - Say positive cue words like “next play”, “I’m ready”, “I got this”
I asked the girls to give me an example of when they would need the reset routine:
- “When someone gets past me while playing defense”
- “When I give up a goal”
- “When I don’t do something I know I could have”
- “When my energy is down”
- “When coach is yelling at me/us”
Many of the above phrases have one root denominator: MISTAKES! Everyone makes mistakes. Great players aren’t mistake free, they just recover faster.
Such a fun first week with this group!! Can’t wait to continue to climb together 🤩💪🏼⚽️