(Girls--this was written night before our first week of this state cup tourny--I meant to give you each this letter after our last game this year. Here it is...
Girls, 5/23/14
I am writing you this letter to tell you how proud I am of
you this year. Hopefully you are reading
this after the State Cup Finals. But if
not, I am just as proud—and I mean it.
We had stepped on the field at the beginning of the year
playing probably one of the very best u14 teams in the country from St. Louis. Boy, they were very good. I believe we were tied 0-0 at half, and
somehow, through your very hard work, lost 2-0.
Pretty amazing, and it allowed me to see a level of play that I am going
to do everything to get you there.
We then played a team from Tennessee. They were state cup winners and ranked first
in the state. You played well against
them. In fact, I left that game thinking
we are not far off from that team. They
were good, but you competed with them.
We were in tournaments that we would have never been invited to play in
a couple seasons ago. Just awesome.
I believe it was after that game that I realized it was time
to shake up our formation and introduce the 4-1-3-1 (also known as the
4-3-3). You QUICKLY caught on. We played the Blue Academy team (with some of
the Red players), and you really outplayed that team and came up with a 0-0
tie. Just awesome! And
boy, was that coach mad!
We then began league play.
You played and beat two teams that were just relegated from Buckeye
State division the previous season. You
played them so well, and I can remember some of you saying how “they were not
good teams”. Just a few thoughts about
those comments…. They were good teams, but you had improved your game so much,
and got so used to playing at the speed of some of the best teams in the
country, that you “graduated” from the level of those Buckeye teams. I think we were 3wins and 1 tie at that
point.
I don’t use excuses, but a fact is a fact. A VERY good defender for our team got
injured. A VERY good striker with a nose
for the goal got injured. And a winger
who was coming along strong towards end of last season got injured. We also had some conflicts with
basketball and track (and will have 18
next season to overcome it). Again, I
hate excuses and like to win no matter the adversity we are up against, but we
ended up finishing the season with a 3-3-2 record. I also can’t forget that fact that some of our
VERY best soccer was during a few of those games that we lost and tied. I can remember one game where we strung
together over 20+ passes without the other team touching the ball. No, we didn’t score that game, but your
Coaches had a vision of becoming a very good passing team. Girls, you “wowed” us that game with your
passing! It was just awesome.
Girls, if you told me before our season that we could finish
.500 in the Buckeye Elite 1 league against some Clubs top academy teams, I
would have been happy with that. But, I
know we are a team that always expects to win.
It’s that drive, of never being satisfied, that keeps us training so
hard to get better and better every season—and that’s what we’ve done again
this season.
No matter if you are reading this at the beginning of the
State Cup Tournament, or are reading this and we just won it all, I want you to
know that this season has been a success for us all. And I want you to also know that I carry our
losses on my shoulders.
I realized the very last practice of the season at Storr Field
that I did not work on finishing nearly enough this season, specifically coming
from crosses out of the air. So, for the
entire 1.5 hour practice, we practiced dribbling down the field and crossing,
with two girls running towards goal to take ball out of the air and finish with
one touch. You made HUGE progress in
that last practice, but I realized we should have been doing that very early in
the season. You played SO well this
season in league play, but we couldn’t finish.
It was the UC highlight film that Coach Stafford showed us, where I saw
that 90% of their goals were headers from crosses. So, that next day (our last practice before
our State Cup Tourny), I decided to make sure we would focus on that. And it was in the first 10 minutes I realized
we had a deficiency… All year we had worked on S4 skill, our new formation,
passing, defense, juggling, slotting, etc.
But, I don’t remember ever spending a practice on that.
With that said, I want you to know that everything we
focused on this year, you did VERY well.
Hopefully we’re reading this late in the Tourny, but regardless, it’s
very exciting for me going into next season knowing that we had such a
deficiency at taking balls out of the air from crosses to finish, and when we
master this next season, we will again take a giant leap in our success!!! Again girls, thanks for doing everything so
great that we focused on this year, and let me take every loss on my
shoulders—and I mean that. I assumed we could do something that I hadn’t
focused on—MY FAULT.
Lastly, I want each of you to know how much you mean to
me. Some people say I am obsessed with
soccer! I don’t think it’s truly soccer that I am
obsessed with. Its 16 wonderful girls
that have the best personalities I’ve seen that make me love coaching. Most girls your age can be so mean and catty
sometimes to each other. I don’t see
that from you girls. You all are such
wonderful girls that really care for one another. It’s you girls that make waking up in the
morning on game days seem like Christmas morning!
Thank each of you for every moment I was able to share with
you this season. I absolutely can’t wait
to watch you represent your high school teams this fall. And I can pretty much guarantee that people
in the stands will be saying things like “who is that girl, she is really
good”. And someone will answer that
question by saying, “I believe she is one of those girls from that WieKings
team”. You’re all awesome!
Sincerely,
Brian
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