"How Karl Dewazien and Anson Dorrance Carried the GSA Force '89 Girls to the South Texas State Playoffs"

Simple. One v one.

Oh, I know. Everybody coaches 1v1. A lot. But Karl Dewazian and Anson Dorrance taught me how to coach it not only successfully, but purposefully, deliberately, and specifically for girls.

It began in 1999, when Karl Dewazian was brought in from Northern California to do a coaching session at the STYSA Summer Workshop held in Corpus Christi. If Karl's name is ringing bells, but you can't quite remember why, it's because he authored what are arguably the most developmentally appropriate series of books on coaching youth soccer available. The books in his FUNdamental Soccer Series have become supplementary texts in the coaching curriculum for many state youth soccer associations.

Karl, Director of Coaching for CYSA, did some excellent pullout sessions in Corpus specifically geared to the STYSA Coaching Education Staff, but it was his "open-to-the-public" presentation on 1v1 that really caught my attention. Karl not only had U6s & U8s playing 1v1 with passion and enthusiasm, he had them setting up their own cones and dividing the playing field into grids! Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have been skeptical that it could happen. But I did see it. Little bitty kids that would drive the "man on the street" crazy were setting up their playing spaces in an organized fashion under Karl's expert direction. With kids he had never seen before, pulled randomly from the audience, Karl showed us how to work the 1v1 drill to the developmental stage of the children involved. Those of us who have taught kindergarten know that only years of experience develop such deftness at successfully communicating with small children about movement in big spaces.

Coach Karl dramatically explained how this intensive approach to 1v1 play had moved his CYSA Modesto Club quickly up the ranks in Northern California. Impressed with Modesto's rapid improvement, Dewazian developed a set of training materials to teach recreational coaches how to maximize the use of 1v1. These materials have subsequently become a key part of CYSA's Coaching Education Field Curriculum. Karl certainly had my attention.

I then remembered Anson Dorrance using similar 1v1 play with his North Carolina women's team to increase the intensity of training at their college practices. Now that was pause for thought! Karl Dewazian, child development guru of American Soccer advocating a drill similar to what I remembered the number one college women's coach using with the number one women's college team in the country. I had to go back and reread what Dorrance had written if I was to make sense of it all for my U-12s.

As I watch local U-8 and U-10 coaches continue to struggle when exhorting their players to "PASS THE BALL," I am reaping the rewards of a more concentrated effort on 1v1 work. My U-12 players regularly practice taking teammates on 1v1 in practice, and they do not hesitate to confidently beat their opponent 1 on 1 in our games. The 1v1 drills have helped their confidence, their decision-making, their technique, and most especially, their level of fitness. Because of the way we structure the drill and commend those who defend well in addition to those who score many goals, we have achieved a motivational balance. Defensive positions are valued on our team, and not everyone is clamoring to play striker. Our players value the totality of the game with a maturity beyond most U-12s.

In his incredibly informative book, Training Soccer Champions, Dorrance walks us through how to use 1v1 to create a super competitive training environment by charting the results and often awarding starting positions to those who perform best in practice each week. His results have been well documented, and while his methods are not for everyone, he has turned out the largest crop of successful female soccer coaches in memory. In my opinion, that is the ultimate measure of coaching greatness. When players honor a coach by following in his or her footsteps, and prove successful in their efforts, it is most reflective of a job well done.

However, U-12s are not college players, and creating too competitive an environment too early ALWAYS causes some sort of socialization problem. Let me say that again. Creating too competitive an environment too early ALWAYS causes some sort of socialization problem. The trade off is: The team may win, but the child's emotional/social growth is stunted. Taunting, tantrums, constant whining, quitting, blaming others, team infighting, lack of mental toughness, dogging it in practice, bullying, etc., etc., etc., are GUARANTEED if the environment gets too competitive too soon. This I don't need. I have some interesting decisions ahead of me. Keeping the developmental needs of my U-12s in mind, how do I balance what Dewazian has demonstrated with U-6s in Corpus against Dorrance's highly successful North Carolina model?

Having taught both kindergarten and at the college level, the solution was simple for me. Start with Dewazian's U-6 model and work my way up to the point I see negative social/emotional effects emerging and then back off a step. The result was magical!

My coaching partner, Matt Fagan, and I introduced the girls to 1v1 play during preseason and used it as interval training. We began with a preseason ratio of 1 minute of play to 3 minutes of rest, working our way to a 1:1 ratio mid-season. At every designated practice (at least once per week preseason), we rotated through 1v1 play until every team member had played each of her teammates. Our roster held 15 girls. You do the math. Fifteen girls playing every teammate means fourteen mini-games. At one minute per game, that's 14 minutes. Add in your rest periods at a 3:1 ratio and you get 42 minutes of rest. 14+42=56. Now add a couple of water breaks to accommodate for the Texas heat and time for warm-up and stretching. You have just spent an entire practice on intensive 1v1 training. That's a huge investment of practice time for one drill! We had to be certain that this training was economical. The interval training took care of fitness, but what about the rest?

Probably the greatest benefit to the U-12 girls proved psychological/motivational. By the time our season began, every girl on our team was intimately aware of the strengths and weaknesses of her teammates. In the first fifteen minutes of a game, they knew which teammate was overmatched and needed extra support, who could easily beat their man and go to goal, etc. They REALLY knew the nuances of their teammates' play. A strong foundation had been laid, and indeed, it was evident in our post-season play. I still marvel that repetitive 1v1 play could contribute so much to their ability to work together as a team.

I first met these girls at a large Waco tournament where they were extremely overmatched. The girls were consistently being battered by bigger, more experienced players; U-12 players who unfortunately had been coached in the art of professional fouls. Several of these teams could have been filmed for a documentary entitled: "The Development of Negative Social Behaviors Through Premature Exposure to Intense Competitive Environments." My memories of that tournament are of ice packs and tears of frustration. We definitely had some work to do on mental and physical toughness. The 1v1 took care of both.

After reading "The Principles Of Coaching Girls" (USYSA Magazine, Summer 1998) written by Shannon Higgins-Cirovski, 1991 World Cup player and U18 Girls National Head Coach, I realized that I could use the 1v1 model to "teach girls to compete." First, I shared the information in that article with my team parents to help them understand the special concerns we have when coaching girls and to build reinforcement at home for the life lessons I would be teaching on the field. My kids are a nice bunch of girls, but some of these girls were just too nice to be successful in a competitive sport. They were stunned when opponents violated the rules of play. Ah, what better way to mentally toughen up a player than demand competency in 1v1 play? I emphasize that this was not coaching my players to bend the rules. It involved coaching them to play tougher and to be mentally and physically prepared when other teams tried to intimidate them. It involved learning to dig deep within themselves to find strength reserves. It involved repeated lessons about composure. But all of these lessons were taught within the framework of 1v1.

At a particularly teachable moment, we pulled the team together and I asked who it hurt if they didn't give their best effort in our 1v1 drills. In typical U-12 fashion, all responded that they were only hurting themselves if they gave less than their best in practice. But through a guided group discussion, my coaching partner and I led the girls to the realization that letting up on a lesser opponent was not only hurting "themselves," but was robbing the opponent of a very important teachable moment. Following this discussion, the expectation was clear. Less than 100% effort in 1v1 training is unacceptable. Always demand the best of your opponent. They will be your ally on Saturday. Challenge them to self improvement. You do them no favors if you hold back and are easy on them in the 1v1 drills. Like Anson Dorrance, we successfully took the "Me, Me, Me" of 1v1 play and turned it into "We, We, We." This was critical to the success of our 1v1 training.

There were days when our particular emphasis was on 1v1 tactics, reinforcing lessons on shielding, shepherding, tackling, not letting the opponent turn, getting goalside, etc., but the reality is that all of these were continually reviewed by the very nature of 1v1 play. These things soon became second nature. In retrospect, one of the most critical benefits was that we never had to spend any time working on our transition game. The very nature of our intense 1v1 training conditioned our girls to immediately go after the ball if they lost it. They collectively developed a very scrappy style of play. To our opponenets dismay, our girls never give up on the ball.

When technical weaknesses reared their ugly head, we simply imposed a condition in 1v1 play that reinforced the targeted skill. Trapping, dribbling and passing were sometimes the focus of our 1v1 games. Occasionally we varied the size of the grids to allow for services by throw-in or a mandatory header as return of service. Extra points were awarded if that header scored a goal. With U-12 girls, feints were a recurring focus. For months, we have had all the girls practicing Coerver moves with no opposition. We are now observing our more advanced players begin to incorporate those moves into our 1v1 drills. That is our signal that as we move into next season we need to challenge every girl to begin trying those moves in their 1v1 play. As coaches, we will verbally reward their fledgling attempts and early awkward successes, but the day they score their first goal with it, they will know in their own heart they have used a Coerver move correctly . At that moment, they own the move. The game is the teacher. The coach is the guide. 1v1 has proven a very useful tool.