#110 Playing with a Back Three

Last week provided a nice break over the 4th of July holiday. Stepping away from the field and not thinking about coaching for a bit is always a welcome change of pace. We now only have two weeks remaining in our summer break. It seems like it just started and now it’s half over! Now I’m working on the plan for my team’s first couple of months of training. I don’t like to script out specific training sessions this early but I like to have an outline of the topics that I want to cover to help us get off to a good start. That doesn’t mean that I’ll limit my sessions to those topics. If there’s something that the team is struggling with I’ll work that into our sessions as well. This week’s question is from Sean. He’s asking if he should break with his philosophy to try and win near the end of the season. Sean gave me some background on his team than then asked. “Do I encourage my girls to play long balls more often, knowing we can get easy goals, and maybe win some games? Or do I stick to my philosophy of development first, possession based play, and more than likely go 0-8 and possibly demoralize my girls going into tryouts?” Thanks for the question Sean. First, there’s nothing wrong with teaching the girls when to make long PASSES. That’s different than playing kickball. My advice to Sean is that I wouldn’t break with my philosophy just to chase the win. If you win you’ve just undermined all of the work you’ve done. If you lose then you lost while abandoning your principles. In This Episode Today I’m looking at the shift, by many professional teams, to playing with a back three. I talk about why this is happening and whether or not it’s something you should try with your own teams. Future Episodes Next week I’m going to discuss whether or not you need to be a good player to be a good coach. I’ve read some articles on the subject recently that have had me thinking about how important playing experience is.