Anson Dorrance is the all-time winningest coach in NCAA soccer. He is the coach that basically codified the competitive cauldron concept used by many top programs across multiple sports. He credits the cauldron as being a big part of his team’s success and his success in training champions. This book describes in some detail what the competitive cauldron is and how it works. Training champions is basically what Anson Dorrance is great at and this book covers a lot of his methodologies and philosophies.
I started reading his book “Training Soccer Champions“ specifically to learn about the competitive cauldron, but I got so much more from it. There are many more commonalities in basketball and soccer than i had realized, but the similarities are even more pronounced if you focus only on coaching rather than the sports. I found multiple applicable insights that I was able to put to work immediately with my own basketball teams. It is interesting how many times the author specifically said “when i was early in my career I did X because I thought Y, but then I learned Z and it made things so much easier”. It was interesting because almost every time he said that I thought “damnit, i learned that the hard way too.” What that means though is that there are other lessons I haven’t learned the hard way yet that will be able to be avoided – or at least maneuvered – because of the insights provided by this book.
This book is exactly as long as it needs to be. It’s full of useful anecdotes and information that any basketball coach or soccer coach would find directly applicable and is broken up into small chapters so even busy coaches can bite a bit off each day. I think it’s applicable beyond those sports as well and would not hesitate to recommend this book to any coach. That goes doubly so for coaches who work with female athletes as the book is written from the point of view of a coach who successfully led female athletes to many, many titles and has a lot of experience working with both male and female players.
NOTE: These are my notes as I’ve read and I’ve gone back to, cleaned up, elaborated on, and added some color to. Anything that is “in quotes” is a quote directly from the book.
Preface
Key points mentioned early on:
- Intensity – Keep track of wins/losses from practice (the cauldron). Also, highlight the extraordinary moments in practice if they ever occur. But don’t heap praise on the small stuff or it will set the standard too low. Never endorse what is below standard and your praise will have meaning.
- Speed of Play – according to the author, in women’s soccer the speed of play can never be fast enough. The standard should be the speed of the men’s game. When you think your team is playing fast enough watch a men’s game or practice and see if they’re coming close. They probably are not. Push for more.
- Transition – ability to transition from offense to defense and the other way around is a huge key to success in soccer. I can tell you the same is true in basketball.
- Decision Making – The author discusses coaching his system and “why” when it comes to tactical decision making. In the end though the idea to make sure they understand the philosophy and are picking up on the clues that should go into decision making. The are left to the players.
- Train on Your Physical and Technical Edge – always push yourself. Physically work crazy hard but we’re not talking just exerting effort in terms of conditioning or strength. We’re talking about push your technique and maintaining control to expand the boundaries of your limitations.
Dorrance on observing coaches: We’re curious about what is said and practice and how. We’re curious about bus ride discussions, meetings, and relationships. We’re looking into your entire influence as a coach, leader, mentor and human being. What are you creating – sometimes very consciously, but often time covertly – as a them for the group of people that play for you. Hopefully, high expectations, high standards, consistent effort and intensity, as well as a commitment to become the best they can be.
Ch 1 – Training Champions Requires Greater Expectations
It takes energy and commitment as a coach to have high expectations . But players need a coach who will have those expectations and will set a standard such that those expectations are understood. And enforced.
“All of us can survive one or two moments of conflict. But is the constant battle against mediocrity that’s stressful in coaching.”
“Part of your persona as a coach is motivating your players to select their free time to develop themselves.”
“Trust me, the standards most players set for themselves will usually be in a comfort zone that is well below their potential”.
Ch 2 – The Balancing Act required in Training Champions
Recommends that coaches always coach to their own personality. It’s okay to have your heroes or coaches you’d like to emulate because of their success, but you have to coach to your personality in order to come across as authentic.
“… we have figured out a way to make the practice environment unbelievably competitive. But the rest of time – even when the drill is over and the young women are jogging to the water fountain – it’s lighter.”
Avoid making it so competitive that it is depressing. Balance between light hearted moments and competitive moments.
Athletics are powerful in life, but in and of themselves not so valuable. But what you learn through athletics about yourself and others is powerful, because people are seen at their best and worst and very real emotions along the entire spectrum are encountered which have to be battled through or worked out.
If you can detach your self from it then athletics becomes almost a study of oneself – am i disciplined or do i just intend to be. am i a team player or do i hope the starter screws up so i can play more? do i panic? am i selfish? do i have phyical courage? so so much more.
Ch 3 – The Competitive Cauldron (key to Training Champions)
Playing a hard schedule hardens your players. Still, creating competition in practice is more important because you can never play as many games as you have days in practice.
The concept of the competitive cauldron is simple and I’ve put it to use with my own teams after learning of it.
Record their practice performance and then share it with them and the whole team.
Didn’t give equal weight to every competition. “We consider speed, one v one ability, and a player’s impact in all the small sided games to carry the greatest weight.” Category multipliers are used to reflect the importance of one category over another.
As the season begins they even compete in conditioning elements. Who gets the furthest in the 12 minute run.
Rankings are posted PER CATEGORY every day. A fully tabulated single score may also be useful and is done at the season level for sure.
The charts are displayed but not discussed by the coaches with the players. If a player asks in a conference then coaches are willing to share as much as the player is interested in hearing. How to get better? What should be focus? etc.
The idea is to encourage competition. Most competitive players will want to be at the top. Less competitive will still usually not want to be at the bottom and will strive to improve. Which, if continued, brings the whole bottom up towards the middle. To be training champions requires raising the bottom of your team as well as the top. The good news is that making your worst players better causes your better players to have to work harder in practice – making them better as well.
See page 33 last paragraph for lots of details about players who want to compete and those who don’t.
A former player said – “Everyone thinks we have 30 of the best players from around the country. That’s not true, we have varying levels. But at every level we’re trying to make each other better.”
Ch 4 – Learning How and Why
Sometimes is more important to be able to parrot the what the coach wants you to believe or understand than it is to actually believe it or understand it. “Our players have a great memorization of what to say back to me in pre-game before they really understand it. But what happens over the course of the four years – because they’re seeing the situations so many time and being regularly quizzed about them – they start to understand.”
Players should be able to describe what and why verbally. They don’t HAVE to understand it or agree with it just yet, but they should be able to verbalize.
Some players can DO IT, but can’t express it. They need to learn to express it as that will help them be able to explain what worked / didn’t work to themselves and to teammates.
Utilizes Socratic method in teaching.
Don’t start “Debbie, why is it important that X…” but instead phrase it “Why is it important that X, Debbie”. In the first version Debbie pays attention the whole time and everyone else sleeps. In the second, everyone is paying attention!
Plays a lot of 11vs11 choreography. This is preplanned movement up the ball all the way up the field in a practice 11vs11 situation. Up and down the field. The idea is to give the players a framework to work out of and to make the “choice points” and “possible choices” clear.
When Coach Anson Dorrance sees something done particularly well he’ll often stop and call it out. It seems strange to the outsider, but his reasons make sense. “When there’s success, we bring the group together and them exactly what they did right” and follow that with “Yes! That’s the way the game is played. If we play like that, we’ll beat everyone!”.
Be sure to articulate the exact reason you are celebrating a play. What was so perfect should be clearly stated.
When you are training champions you never know when the light bulb goes on. After a while “Great Game” is not expansive enough. Everyone learns at different speeds and everyone might learn during a different day. When you bring the group together, you never know which player is finally realizing what you’re talking about.
Speed of play *the ability to navigate the ball through the other team” is important. You want to maximize it. This requires at least the following:
- Good / Quick decision making
- Speed of movement off the ball
- Speed of organization around the ball
Remember: A (soccer) game has an infinite number of situations a player may face. The idea is to create a basic structure for them to play out of let their creativity flow out of it. Give them desired general tendencies, coach them, and then let them create.
If a player makes decision that goes against what you coach and it works out then that is good place to stop play. Let them know that it worked out this time (maybe because of their skill or other gift of theirs), but that is will not always and if possible give examples where it would not. Then coach them on how it is supposed to be done.
Players need to understand risk vs reward.
RISKY: Even if you sweeper can beat a player in her own box, you reprimand her at halftime or after the game because it isn’t worth the risk for her to do it! Even if she gets away with it, the risk should not be taken.
RISKY: If a player on the edge of the attacking penalty box with only one player to beat is looking to pass then you should reprimand her because passing in that instance has so many variables (other defenders coming, defense is catching up, teammate must be ready, teammate must receive the pass, tight window requires excellent pass, etc).
“The only excuse to pass the ball in the attacking third with one player to beat if your pass results in a first-time shot on goal from a better angle. Players should take the risk and responsibility to beat the player herself in this situation.”
Interesting note, I was sharing a basketball book with my daughter, and I came across basically the exact same rule in the context of a basketball game. When the ball is in the lane, it’s not passing time unless the pass will lead to better immediate shot. Too many opportunities for a turnover or fumbled ball are present if you start passing in the lane. You risk giving away a perfectly good scoring opportunity.
Players understanding these risks (views on risk reward) only come coaches giving precise information on how we want things done and our views on what the risks and rewards are in various situations. We must be able to defend our own reasoning or it will be hard to convince someone to follow it.
Ch 5 – Respecting Opponents
Respecting your opponent is a must.
Prove you respect your opponent by crushing them. This proves that you got up to play against them and played hard because not doing so could give them a chance to get back in at you.
You must compete against the other team, but always compete against the game too. The game is sometimes a tougher opponent than the opponent on the schedule.
“All of us as spectators, players and caoches have seen , participated in, or coached in games where a team outshot an opponent 40-1 and lost the game 1-0. When that happens, the opposition hasn’t beaten you. The 40-1 total shows you that. All that happened to you that day is the game itself.”
It’s much harder to consistently win than it is to be consistently a good, competitive team. Training champions requires that you as a coach encourage and environment where players win consistently.
One of the worst ways to treat an opponent is to treat them as if you are better than them.
Set subgoals during the game to keep intensity up during the game, even when winning. Creating fury’s of intensity is the goal.
Warmups are important. “Pregame warmup is a physical and mental rehearsal. A non-contact technical rehearsal for the game to come”.
Substitute perfection for intensity in warmups (don’t want to pull every muscle being too intense!)
Focus must be perfected.
Warmup process is covered in detail at the beginning of the season. It’s very serious and reviewed.
A bad start is difficult to recover from.
“So the warmup for me is critical. Even where I stand is important. I like to stand right in the edge of the center circle, close to the other team’s warmup so i can assess both teams. If I can sense that their focus is greater than ours and they’re doing a better job warming up, I will bring the group together. If I bring the group together, I have gotten a sense that the other team is better prepared for the match. I will say something like, ‘Right now your focus is so poor you are preparing to lose. If the game were to start right now you would 3-0 of 4-0. You either change your mentality right now, or basically decide you are going to lose this contents.”
“I can tell if my team is ready in the warmup, and that is the only time I can tell. No one else can tell, unless they are really studying the warmup and every player in it. It just surprises me that so few people understand what is involved in winning consistently, or in winning period. As if an event, a game, or a team automatically prepares you. It doesn’t. A championship game does not prepare you for winning. A great opponent does not prepare you to be focused or competitive. The only thing that can consistently prepare you is the warmup. If things are going poorly, you have to reorganize and refocus.”
Before each game, coach is excitedly nervous even if he thinks they’re about to tear someone in half.
Ch 6 – Having and Effect (when Training Champions)
There’s a difference between lecturing or even informing and coaching.
“If you have to yell at them from the sidelines you haven’t coached them. If you have coached something into someone, guess what, they are going to do it. Coaching is about having an effect, not about telling them what to do.
Coaching is a lot like parenting. You have to nag… in a positive way! You have to remind your players what to do and why. You have to insist that they perform the way you want until they become the sort of player you want them to become, much like you’d correct your children until they become the sort of person that is appropriate.
You must instruct not just what you want, but how and why.
Remember, most of sports behavior that actually works is not natural. It is learned and difficult to do. So to get your players to what you want will require constant reminders. Try different ways, humor, sarcasm, etc. But you have to keep up the energy to have the effect you want.
Players that do well should be called out that they are doing well. They will feel good and others will notice and want the same. It begins to become part of the culture and from their tradition.
Ch 7 – It’s Okay to Compete
The toughest challenge for the author in developing female players is getting them to compete against their friends in practice. They will compete against other teams, but there’s invariably less intensity competing against each other in practice. How to get rid of the practice drop off in intensity?
The answer is to convince them that it is okay to compete!
Almost every first year player has a hard adjustment because they are not used to it. But it gets easier as the year goes on and players would have it no other way once they get the understanding of how the competition within the team both makes them stronger individually and as a team – and that no one is taking things personally. We can abuse each other in practice and then laugh and have a good time on the way to the locker room afterwards or even between drills.
By pairing underclassmen with veterans the underclassmen get the idea pretty quick that not playing hard is unacceptable. The veteran will make it clear that “if you play weak and you lose… i lose because you’re on my team… and I don’t want to lose so get after it!”.
The competitive cauldron is a substitute for getting in the face of players (what you might do with men) and works for both men and women. “We try to create a training environments that are incredibly intense. And by recording everything, it gives the players permission to compete. It tells these women it’s okay to be the best. It’s okay to go after your buddy in practice. It’s okay to win..”
The competition in practice has a hardening effect as well.
FURY and COMPOSURE
Defense requires FURY. Offense requires COMPOSURE. It’s about possession of the ball. When you don’t have it you have to have FURY to get it. When you do have it you have to play with composure to make the most of that opportunity.
Remember that attacking is rarely successful so you need a player with composure and who can understand that you just keep working it and the last failure is not life threatening. At the same time you need a defender who just wants to scrap, to fight as often as possible, and to win ever battle.
Ch 8 – The Off Season
Offseason is exact opposite of regular season. Playing season is team focused, off season is player development focused.
Play as many games as you can. Keep score! Not necessarily actual games! Small sided games and variations of the game (different equipment, modified rules, etc) are great to keep things fun and fresh. Remember the idea is to find games that are fun and competitive but that reinforce what you want.
Some examples might be things like 3 on 3 basketball instead or 5v5 soccer instead of 5v5 hoops and 11v11.
In order to MAXIMIZE ball touches you need to decrease the player to ball ratio. So either play games with more balls in play or try to play games with fewer people.
Play on different size fields / courts. Mix thhings up.
Each time you change something different tactics and skills get exercised / emphasized. Be sure to describe the key things that game is meant to help develop. Just 1 or 2 items. Give praise for as many good things as you want but make sure to give praise for those things you specifically want to develop.
Anson Dorrance describes a crazy fun sounding soccer variation that they played in the raquetball courts. They “taped up” goal markings on the walls and let players play 1 on 1, no holds barred, inside the court. Use the walls, use the ceiling, etc. Any way to to score is allowed!
Ch 9 – Fit for Life
Players coming in fit makes your life easier. Training champions is hard. Training unfit players to become champions is harder!
You have to tell them how to do this though. May send letters with workout plans, etc. Let them know that when they show up their will be fitness tests.
He mentions a sprint workout one of players did with Olympic training over the summer who came back faster than ever. Her name was Michelle Akers. She told him the workout and he tried it with the whole team the next summer. The results were amazing. (can we find this workout?)
Keep in mind fitness isn’t just conditioning, but anaerobic also. So strength and speed. You CAN get faster if you work at it intentionally.
Invest deeply in fitness and it will pay off throughout the season.
Qualities need to be come a player on a given coaches squad. Each coach will have different concepts for each of the following.
- Certain technical level
- certain tactical level
- certain fitness level
- certain psychologic dimension
Bonus Qualities
- Self discipline – will train themselves
- Chemistry Helper
Fun and happiness are not the same thing. Some people thinks happiness comes from stringing a bunch of fun things together. “I once read that fun is something you enjoy while it’s going on, but things that make you happy are what you appreciate once the event is finished.”
For me, I’m sure there’s a blend of the two in many cases.
Ch 10 – Leading Women Athletes
The author coached males for 13 years and he coached at NC for 18+ seasons.
Men and women have different leadership styles and respond differently to the various leadership styles.
Women follow leaders if they feel the leader cares about them the person rather than than the athlete only. Females want to connect.
Females are willing to try something new because they trust you and you suggest it. Men will be very resistent if they have something they believe already works for them and you simply suggest something new. Males will make you force it on them, essentially demanding it- possibly with quite a bit of pushback.
Female athletes take tone and body language into the message moreso than males. Males understand that scathing criticism is a deconstruction of their game – not them as a person. Females have a harder time seperating the two. Try to use a positive tone and supportive body language. They’ll hear the how you said it way more than the what you said if you have negative tone or body language.
“It’s difficult for men to have positive body language and use a positive tone, especially in an athletic coaching arena that is filled with frustration and correction. Invariably what ends up being communicated is disgust. That’s the nature of athletics. But when a man is criticized in this fashion, he understands it’s just someone taking his game apart, not taking his life apart. A woman does not separate the two.” pg 66
Using film for men and women athletes is different too.
Female athletes assume the leader is talking about them when a negative item is being discussed, males assume the coach is talking about someone else. Males need to be shown their mistakes on film to see it was really them.
Females don’t require film to be corrected. In fact, showing them film often just shows them how bad they are and they take that the wrong way.
Using film to reinforce something females did well is very powerful. (me note: i assume for males the same would be true).
If self-confidence is a problem, the video only magnifies the mistake for women.
“Coaches have a tendancy to only stop practice during an entirely negative environment to point out and correct mistakes. Yet one of the best times to stop a training session is during or right after a brilliant series of performances to confirm exactly what you want.”
Callout: Coaching youth sports these separations are less prevenlent. The author is unsure why.
Referenced another book: “The Female Advantage”
Ch 11 – Your Role with Reserves
The author discloses a letter he received from a player who was a reserve most of her time at UNC. The letter was beautiful and was basically the player conveying that she appreciated being a reserve and her amazement at how she was still made to matter even in that lesser role.
The letter shared the story of “You make a difference” centered around a small town that made wine. They were supposed to all donate some wine for a celebration and everyone did except one person who decided to place water instead of wine into the vat. When the guest of honor got his drink – he was surprised to receive water rather than wine. What you put in matters is the moral – even if you think no one will notice or that you aren’t important.
Role players are people. And many of them are great players too. Just not as good as who plays in front of them. Your job involves being supportive of them the same way you do with your starters.
You aren’t just deal with the role players. You’re dealing with everyone in their circle. Their mom, their significant others, friends, trainers, etc all have their own opinion of the player. And they are all sharing their opinion with the player. So while you’re trying to coach the player in one way, you must understand that they are hearing other things from other sources and you have to manage that – or try to teach them how to.
None of a player’s inner circle want to hear “she’s better than me – that’s why I’m not playing”, but sometimes that’s the case.
Players who feel they should be playing and do not react well can poison a team. This is one of the big reasons why Anson believes that the metrics and stats they keep are so useful. Players can look at the metrics and ladders and be able to see how they could improve in order to get more time. And because the stats are objective the players know that they have a chance if they can work their way into a better position on the leaderboards.
They also create a “draft” system where there are respected old players who draft their teams from the the rest of the pool. The draft position is shared with players so they can see how the rest of team believes they would help. If their draft rank is very low then they can understand that they’re really not as close to being a top player as they thought – something that is hard to accept if you’re just talking to your friends on the team who might have a hard time telling you the full truth.
Ch 12 – Organizing Team Chemistry
Role players are a big key to a team. But being a role player is hard to accept for some. Training champions means making sure the entire team is in it together.
There must be an unselfish vibe. There must be a willingness to work hard from top to bottom. Just as important is that everyone agrees that everyone else is working as hard as expected.
Many players are too nice to call out their teammates for poor attitude or effort. But not doing so causes frustration and anger / resentment to build which can lead to chemistry issues and can infect the whole team over time. To address this the author chose to implement a peer evaluation in which every player rated every other player on specific attributes – and then the players were given feedback on the aggregate data in private meetings with the coaches. This allowed the players to see what they’re teammates thought about them – not from a coaching standpoint, but from their peers.
The author also discussed setting up the team as a community of equal valued participants. Notice that the value was not correlated based on their athletic prowess or performance, but rather equal for all. This gives everyone a feeling that they belong and that everyone matters which is an ongoing theme. This helps keep people grounded while also keeping players who don’t get a ton of from getting discouraged or lost.
The peer ranking categories are also good as coaching points. Some players come from a background or are raised in a culture (American’s specifically mentioned) where they expect so much and don’t want to hear nothin from nobody. They want theirs, whatever that means. But by being peer reviewed and having the specific categories discussed players are able to be introduced to what the coaches have determined is important AND get an understanding of how their teammates believe they are doing. Sometimes that alone is enough to affect behavior because, well, they just didn’t know they behaving like someone no one wanted to be their teammate.
Make sure you have relationships with as many players as possible – not just your top players. If you only have relationships with your top players the rest of the team will understand (rightly or not) that they are only valued if they are top performers. To get community and chemistry the players will ideally feel equally valued – which means it is a personal thing, not an athletic thing. This may sound a bit prescriptive, but make it a point to develop some relationships with a couple of reserves. Remember, there’s a good chance that your newer players will be reserves and will grow into your stars of the years. So each year you’ll have a create new relationships and older ones will be distanced due to graduation, advancement, or other life changes. This is a fact of the coaches life, and is bitter sweet.
Sport, basketball or soccer etc, may have been the thing that brought them together, but it won’t be what they remember about being together. Their relationships will be what they remember. As a coach, the same is true when you’ve done it long enough as you move from exploring the depths of the game itself to instead exploring how to get the most from a team within the game and from the players in their own lives.
Ch 13 – Protecting the Take On Artist
A take on artist is a player who is wanting to take on other players and score. 1v1, 1v2, 1v3… they don’t care. They’ve got such a competitive spirit and confidence in themselves that they are not going to shy away from trying to score.
Some coaches and a lot more parents see this type of player as a ballhog and as someone who needs to be reeled in. But the author sees this type of player as the core to his team and a player who must be protected. Not just from parents and coaches, but from their own teammates who only feel “less touches” without recognizing that trying to force a change would probably make for a less valuable teammate and less success for the team as a whole.
I’ll be honest, this chapter changed my mind about players i’ve seen play in the past. Players I would have wanted nothing to do with if they were trying out for basketball (watched them be take on artists in lacrosse) are seen in a different light be me now. Coaching girls i will say one of the hardest things to get girls to do is attack the opponent 1v1 on offense. Given the chance now I think I’d consider recruiting that lacrosse player that the parents thought were a ball hog to see if she would consider being a basketball hog too!
Ch 14 – The value of the Three Front
This chapter is very soccer specific and is primarily concerned with the reason for strategic choices that have been made at the UNC program.
Still, there is a useful clarification of the authors understanding that the women’s game is not the same as the men’s game (both tactically and technically) and that just because something works in the men’s game doesn’t necessarily mean it would work in the women’s side. Both males and females play on the same size field but their body’s abilities are not the same. Women have different strengths. This means that if you see that men can do something on a soccer field you cannot just assume that women will be able to naturally and immediately do the same.
This is not meant to be a put down against the women’s game and those who play in it, rather it’s meant to help coaches to understand that extra training may be required to do something in the women’s game that comes naturally to men due to their physical differences.
Ch 15 – Field Organizationg (Training Champions without smothering their creativity)
This may sound simple, and it probably is, but the author basically states that their general plan is to attack attack attack. Both offensively and defensively they want to put pressure on their opponent.
“Finishing” on attacks is a primary focus. Getting shots is hard, making them even harder. Spend time working on finishing!
To help with finishing they focus on framing the goal. That is, on the shot, one attacker goes ball side goal post, one to the opposite goal post, and a third to the goalie. This gives you ample angles and opportunity for rebounds. In basketball the equivalent is kind of to make sure that one player goes to the rim, and ideally at least one player flank each side of rim matching the angle of the shot.
Choreography is important, but the flow of the play should determine as much or more about where players end up. Let your vocal personality players communicate and arrange the team as necessary.
A lot of shots are blocked or deflected. Framing the goal helps redirected those missed shots into the goal on a second attemp.
Takeaway: Garbage goals are real – and they still count – and are more plentiful than “great goals”. If you know you’re going to miss more than you make then you can help yourself score more by knowing WHERE the misses will go and getting to them quickly and aggressively. Doing so will give you more shots on goal and a higher percentage of shots where the defense isn’t set – which should make for a higher percentage on those second opportunities.
It’s nice to have a great talent than can self score on terrific shots, for sure. Goals scored via redirection can be taught and trained in a few focused weeks, but those terrific shots have to be recruited! Ideally you have some of each!
POWERFUL POINT: As a coach, part of your job is to find frameworks and choreographs that give your team the benefits of your knowledge and experience without them having to make all the same mistakes that it would take for them to acquire that same knowledge and experience.
A very important aspect of coaching is “convincing an inexperienced player what to do based on what you have seen”.
Choregraphed vs Not Choreographed – Box organization and framing is choreographed. Finding seams is not choreographed. Finding seams changes as player positions change and requires understanding timing. For example, being in the seam is bad if you’re there too early or late. Your teammate being in the seam is no good if you can’t deliver the ball at the appropriate time. Coordination must occur on the fly and recognition is difficult.
Ch 16 – Manager’s Stat Pack
Not going to go into depth here, but a huge collection of example stats that the team keeps are in this section. This includes some of the drills that they use in practice for competition.
Ch 17 – Computer Analysis
At the time this book as published, computer analysis in sports (sports analytics) was just being birthed. The author was originally not interested at all, but became a firm believer when introduced to quality software that illuminated to him and his players things that were difficult to share before in a non-personal way.
This field has basically proliferated all of sports. Data is a major component of analyzing team performance and the ability to capture and analyze that data, to make it useful, is at the center of much of the work in sports management industry today.
Final Thoughts
This book was a huge benefit for me to have read. It’s got a great mixture of strategy discussion as well as team management related items being covered in depth. It includes ideas for how to reach different types of players and how to build and maintain team chemistry. The authors wrote in a down to earth way and if I wasn’t taking such copious notes I could have probably read it in a long evening or a few short ones. I also really liked that it was easy to read this as a basketball coaching book instead of a soccer coaching book as almost everything covered was just as relevant in the basketball world as it is in the soccer world. I highly recommend reading it if your desire is to be training champions!
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