Sports for Your Child

This is a story of a recreational lacrosse team that developed into a national contender in just a few short years.  This Raiders team came into existence three years ago as a mid-level developmental team.  No players were turned away and we had eleven players on that team that had never played lacrosse before.  Miraculously we ended up the season at twelve wins and two losses.  It seemed like we could have produced a movie based upon that season and believe me, I thought about it.

The second year, we stepped up to a tougher level of competition at the second highest level in the state of Colorado.  With a record of nineteen wins and zero losses, (a dream season) in that second year (2008), we were compelled to try our hand at the red (highest) level this year (2009). 

Head coach Don Knobloch had a vision and methodically went about making it happen.  The regular season was a challenge as we finished with two wins and eight losses with fourteen players and were quickly eliminated from the state championship. 

As I mentioned, Coach Knobloch had a plan, though, and twelve outstanding additional players joined the team in the postseason as we attempted to win the Colorado Cup.  We finished the Cup as champions with six wins and zero losses as we defeated the state select team twice.

We encountered some challenges in the Vail Shootout and finished fourth out of sixteen teams.  The ultimate winner was a great team representing the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA).  Lessons were learned by all of us and we were cautioned that we were going to have challenges in the national championship as most teams would be comprised of a mixture of  ‘rising’ high school sophomores and freshmen.  Our team consisted of rising seventh, eight and ninth graders.  Oh boy!

That brought us to the ultimate goal, the U15 National Championship.  Thirty-two teams from all regions of the country descended upon Bel Air, MD for the championship July 8-10, 2009.  We started off playing against one the tournament’s top teams, Blackwolf Select.  We weren’t ready for what we encountered, lost ten to two, and stood at the verge of being eliminated from the championship bracket.  One more loss in our three games in pool play and we would go to the consolation bracket.  Ouch.  We didn’t spend all that money and time practicing to be eliminated so quickly. 

In our second game against Team Vermont we won eleven to seven and found ourselves slotted to play the Maryland Hot Stix.  We didn’t know what to expect but, hey, it was a Maryland team that had showed up very well in a prestigous tournament earlier in this year.  We started the game very apprehensively as Maryland, and the Northeast in general are the hotbeds for lacrosse at any levels in the United States.  We played a real tough game, came out on top nine to five, and thus were headed to the Championship Bracket.  WOW!  We could have stopped there and it would have been a dream come true.

The next day we began by playing against the number one seed, “Next Level Lacrosse”.  We were introduced to a brand of lacrosse that we hadn’t seen yet and lost eleven to one.  We were sure that Next Level would be the ultimate champions! 

Now at two wins and two losses, we were facing elimination from the tournament in our next game. We watched as Team Colorado was eliminated from the tournament in the losers bracket and felt lucky indeed that we might end up ranked as the sixteenth team in the tournament.

Our next opponent, the BattleLax Bombers, a team from North Carolina, with ten rising sopohomores, played a strong game against us.  Against many odds, we came from behind to win six to five after our starting goalie, Jason Cleary, stopped a point blank shot with just a few seconds remaining.  The players mobbed Jason and we were on Cloud Nine!  We now knew that we couldn’t finish worse than twelfth in the country.  It was an amazing feeling.

Although we lost the next day to a strong Ithaca team, we were very content to know that we finished our season within the top twelve teams in the country.  The ultimate winner was FCA and although the coach was the same as the Vail team, he had some new players that were rising sophomores.  You’d have to say that the FCA coach, Frank Kelly was the U15 coach of the year.  What a great coach and a nice guy as well.

It’s been a dream ride, but most of our boys are off to high school and probably ten different teams.  The comraderie and sense of family has been tremendous and these boys will be linked forever.  With a mixture of emotions, I say “Go Raiders” or ”303′ as the players would chant after huddles.  I’ll miss this group of boys.

Rich Rosdal Coaches Corner, US Lacrosse National Championship championship, game, lacrosse, Maryland, money, National, Play, recreation, team

Unless your child is at an age where the score of the game isn’t tracked, winning counts and losing hurts.  The original quote was “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”  I believed this for a long time, but as I found out in my first year of coaching, losing is not fun at all.  I would prefer if the quote went like this “It matters if you win and how you play the game.”

The funniest quote that I read on the subject was “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame” by Oscar Wilde.  I also read a witty comment that the person who originally said “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game” obviously lost a lot.

Getting back to my first year in coaching; my best friend at the time had a vision where kids could play to have fun whether they won or lost.  We went 1-7 and, believe me, when you see kids crying in the huddle you know they’re not having fun.  That was when I realized that if you want kids to have a lot of fun in sports you have to each them how to win.

You can’t go out on the field and play to win, either.  The best way to win is to work hard and smart and then focus on execution.  If you focus on winning only your eye is on the outcome, and not the moment.  The best teams are focused entirely on the ‘moment in time’ and that moment continually moves forward.  If players continually focus on the present, they can’t possibly beat themseleves up for making a bad play.  This is the best way to have a ’short memory’.

Work hard and smart, train diligently, focus on the moment and you stand a great chance of winning.

Happy July 4th weekend, everybody.

Rich Rosdal Coaches Corner, Parents Parlor, Player's Panacea focus, lose, moment, outcome, present, team, win

Too much talent?  We’ve seen this in professional sports many times.  A general manager stacks his team with many of the best talents in the game.  Observers expect those players to overcome any adversity and then the team doesn’t gel.  Every team must have team players to win.  If a team has too many stars and the players do not subordinate their egos, there won’t be team play.

Our summer lacrosse team has many players that have outstanding talent and our challenge as coaches is to manage the player’s “collective team thinking” as well their talents.  If we do this, the team can go a long way.  If we don’t accomplish this task, we’ll follow a long list of underacheiving teams.

We have our first summer team tournament this weekend and it will be interesting to see how well we do against some excellent teams.  More info on the tournament will follow after the weekend.  Enjoy your weekend, all.

Rich Rosdal Coaches Corner, Parents Parlor, Player's Panacea adversity, Challenge, coaches, ego, Players, Talent, team, tournament

As a coach, it’s your choice to select captains but, if you do, just understand that it’s best if you manage the process. It’s essential that captains selected realize that their responsibility is to make sure that the other players are motivated and in alignment with the coach’s goals. The captain is an emissary for the coach and should translate the coach’s directives into “player talk”. A captain who thinks about themself first and the team second, doesn’t understand the importance of the role they play. A captain, absolutely cannot be insubordinate.

Be careful about selecting your own child as a captain if they don’t display leadership qualities. The other players will resent that they have to follow a player who isn’t a good leader, just because their parent is the coach. A good solution would be to have the players vote for captains just to see who they view as a leader.

If you don’t want to manage the process then just don’t use captains. It takes awhile for kids to learn how to lead, meaning that you’ll have to teach them. They can’t get involved in petty issues, as a captain, as their teammates will be smart enough to figure out that the captain isn’t thinking about team first.

My youngest son has been selected or voted captain for the last couple of years on his football and lacrosse teams. Luckily, I wasn’t the head coach on either of those teams. He’s had to learn many lessons about how essential it was for the team’s success for him to maintain a leadership position. As a captain, he had to say goodbye to immature things like: making other players wrong, giving up when behind, displaying his emotions on his sleeve and talking back to the coach.

The captain can be a pillar for the team. I have seen kids who, in the role of captain, either refused to let teammates quit or get too complacent when ahead. This is when the decision pays off.

Being a captain can be a great experience for a kid but only if they learn and perform the job.

Rich Rosdal Coaches Corner captain, Coach, insubordinate, leader, Parent, player, teach, team