Personal Narrative Soccer Team

Soccer was one of my first loves in life, so when I was given the opportunity to pass this love on to someone else I jumped at the chance. During the spring soccer season of 2016 I was given the opportunity to coach a competitive U12 girls soccer team. The team consisted of fifteen girls between the ages of ten to twelve. I’ve played soccer for eleven years; in the past, I coached two recreational soccer teams. I figured I was up for the challenge of coaching a competitive soccer team. Regular season play went reasonably well, but the highlight of the season was when the team went to The Yellowstone Cup in Rexburg, Idaho. This is where we had the most growth as a team and where I learned the most about tactics as a coach. Practices started at the beginning of March. Our first few practices were indoors, because there was still snow on the ground outside. I started to teach them basic foot skills, like passing, trapping, and dribbling. After the snow melted we started to practice outside. As games started we were winning consistently, except when we …show more content…
The team was placed in the silver division, with two other teams. My dad was on the roster as my assistant coach. Having my dad at my side helped boost my confidence that I would steer the girls in the right direction. On Friday the 10th, we had two games. The first game was against a U11 team from Pocatello. The game was very intense. We were two evenly matched teams, that were skilled, and driven to win the tournament. During the first ten minutes our goal was pelted by shots from the other team. We were scrambling trying to figure out their playing style and how to counteract their game plan. But during this crazy ten minutes, my keeper was amazing! She saved shot after shot. Keeping the score tied at 0-0. As we got ten minutes into the game I started to think about substitutions. I didn 't want to pull my starters off because they were doing so