Tag: sports

Some FAQ answered:

Do you “cut” players? Are there tryouts?

No, we do not cut players. All players who attend and conform to team/school rules and expectations have a place in the WABS family. That said, there is only so much room on the bus and we have to fit a Varsity and JV team on it. As a result:

a) All players will train in either a GOLD (Varsity) group or BLUE (JV) group. These groups will be delineated each day by performance, attendance, technical ability, effort etc. Both groups will do the same drills, same conditioning, same technical and tactical program and both will get instruction from all coaches.

b) For each Varsity game – a group of 18-20 will be selected as needed and as earned. For each JV home game – all JV players will attend and ALL will play roughly equally. For JV away games – a smaller roster will need to be chosen and the same metrics that are used to select for Varsity will be applied here.

c) Varsity is highly competitive and decisions here will be made with the best interest of the success of the team in mind as opposed to participation. JV emphasis is similar (we want to succeed and win here just as much) but we also have a secondary goal of ensuring participation of ALL our JV players.

*Play hard, attend all functions, listen well, give your best to the team to earn your minutes and time on the field every day!

What about uniforms? What are they like?

a) We wear our blue and gold jerseys / blue shorts and socks at home or our third kit black jerseys and shorts and socks. Depending on final numbers we may to wear a few plain blues on the field as well as we have 38 standard blue and golds. We will see.

b) We wear our whites for away games which may include blue shorts depending on captain preference. White jerseys and socks are mandatory when away. Everyone will be issued a white away uniform.

What do I wear for practice?

As of now, comfortable T-Shirts and Shorts. Practice shirts on the way!

Why Spain will win the World Cup

I expect both of these teams to line up and play Sunday like they have all tournament. Both teams are confident and both teams know their own weaknesses and how to hide them. Both coaches have proven to be stable Captains of their respective ships. The winner of this game will be the team that has the winning tactic and to my eyes – this is Spain. Read the rest and let’s see if you agree.

xG and SOS:

Over the course of the tournament, Spain leads Argentina in xG by 2 – and they did it against much stronger opponents as measured by FIFA rankings. It can be argued that the rankings might not reflect the current form of a team like Egypt for example but the difference between the two teams strength of schedule cannot be ignored:

Avg ranking of team faced by Spain: 9.8

Avg ranking of team faced by Argentina 29.8

Interestingly, despite Spain having the higher xG, Argentina has scored more goals as they have been more clinical in finishing their chances. Argentina has pulled victory from the jaws of defeat twice but I think the law of averages will reward the team that consistently creates more chances and this is Spain.

Edge: Spain

Style of Play:

Argentina was very tough contesting the ball against England and it affected England’s ability to move the ball quickly. Spain presents a different challenger for Argentina as they can move the ball more quickly and provide more options around the ball than England. It is hard for a team to change their identity quickly and I think Argentina’s bouts of aggression which served it well will ultimately be their undoing.

Edge: Spain

Personnel:

Of course Messi is Messi and one does not need to argue whether he is the best that has ever played to analyze his impact on this game. He is a danger man and can hurt you. No more need be said. Let’s be honest though, there are 22 danger men on the field and plenty more on the bench. The average player ratings during the tourney give the slight edge to Spain but this is probably the stat is trust the least. Man to man, this is an even match.

Edge: Even

Overall: Spain wins 2-0

Player Rating USMNT vs Belgium

Having read some of the other websites player ratings – I am wondering if they watched the same game. Here are my thoughts:

I will start with the good grades:

Tillman – A – This is not because of the goal. He was tireless and active and of our players seemed truly in the fight.

Balogun – B – He made runs, was active, and had a dangerous chance. Strikers can’t and don’t score every game. He was active.

Robinson – B- – You knew he was on the field unlike some of our other players. Up and down and having to cover the whole left side really. Some culpability in the 1st goal but he was fine tonight.

Freeman – C – There was trouble down the right all night. Some successful challenges. Some poor positioning. Some good some bad.

Adams – C- – Outmanned in the midfield and not on his best night but was saddled with low ebb all around him but he didn’t dispel the gloom and became lost in it.

Berhalter – C- The super sub brought some fire and that shot was whisker close ….. to hitting the post! A full foot from punching it in. Good hit but those are not enough for a grade above a C. Not much else that was game changing from the son of our former coach.

Dest – C- Not as aggressive as I wanted him to be. Some sites have him ranked as a 2/10. C’mon man!

Richards – C- Had some clumsy moments. Seemed to care the most at the end – nothing objective to support that. He’s a good center back – it just all crumbled around him.

Ream – D+ – Did have some successful challenges. No one can be a hero all the time and he was ordinary tonight. Beaten on header. Clumsy on the 3rd goal when we needed a hero. The grade seems harsh based on his age but no favors for the old. I think we need another center back or two.

Reyna – D Not much to speak of and he played TOO LONG for that to be the narrative. Did he help with momemtum at beginning of second half – yes. Did he change the game? No.

McKennie – D- Forgot he was playing. I even looked for him at times to locate him. Disappearing act par excellence.

Pulisic – F – Led the team in turnovers despite exiting. Maybe he was playing hurt all along. I hate the whining for fouls which makes him hard for me to grade always but today he did not pass the test.

Coach Pochettino – As a coach my heart goes out to him. Did he pick our best 11? Probably. Do we have some talent holes and gaps? Yes. He tried his best to hide our weaknesses and for that I rate him well. BUT – we came out with less intensity than we should have and that is on him and despite kicking bottles was not able to change the game enough with subs – partly due to the roster. Was he expecting Belgium to pack it in like our other opponents (except Turkey and we lost to them). Distractions, energy, and lack of aggressiveness are his responsibilities and he must go down with the ship – D.

USMNT Player Ratings (vs. Paraguay)

Freese: Always available for the pass back. Good chemistry with back-line. When called into action, a save would have been a miracle. A-

Richards: Some wonderful interventions. Beaten for the second ball on Paraguay’s lone goal so not a perfect night but a very good one. Tougher tests await. A-

Ream: A very solid night, no obvious mistakes. Boring performance which is perhaps just what you want from a CB. The pressure high up the field took a lot of the pressure off the back line we must all say so I can’t get carried away. A-

Freeman: Similar report to the other CB but Freeman was a touch more involved in the regular goings on in the fray so I give him a higher grade – deserved or not I don’t know but his night was a touch more interesting. A

Robinson: Bright performance and all lit up like his hair. Natural wingback. My fav performance of the night A+

McKennie: Active and Everywhere and keeps that ball close to his feet – some turnovers but always has ambition.Worked hard off the ball too or this system would break down. A

Adams: Tough job for one man and he could have done without the card. How many miles did he run? A-

Dest: Fantastic – constantly slipping past – aggressive. A

Pulisic: Splitting the double was awesome and was super dynamic. I don’t like the crying about fouls but I can’t fix soccer and Christian is just playing todays game. B+ (only because he played just first half), otherwise A

Tillman: Active, instrumental. Easy decision as to why he starts. A

Balogun: No offense to past American strikers but we have never had a guy like this. That left footed blast was world class. A

Do we finally have a world cup team that can really go after another team?

Pochettino: Congratulations – you picked a great team and they were dynamic. Creating width with the wingbacks, Pulisic, Dest and McKennie, doomed a team that wanted to stay compact – surprisingly, Paraguay fell right into the trap. You did right by us: A Not perfect because of the soft goal conceded. See below.

Collective grade: Ruthless soccer and high quality. Paraguay clearly not prepared for the intensity though. The conceded goal was soft and that worries me a fraction but it was 4-1. A

Looking ahead!

Some items the coaches are working on and would like to share with the team!

  1. A summer lifting and training schedule is being worked on and will be posted up soon.
  2. We are currently playing after school on Tuesday and Friday from 2:45-3:45 PM at WAIS. It’s a lot of fun and this is how we get better. If you / your child isn’t busy – come and work to get better with us! Shout-out to Harnit, Keerat, Ben and others that have played when they had a break /opportunity when their normal spring sports weren’t in action. That’s commitment and that is WABS.
  3. I have emailed out to 8th grade students looking to recruit. If you know of an athlete that has played or looks like they can play or that you think would be a positive thing for them to be on a team – put them in touch with me. EVERYONE can all help the program in lots of ways
  4. I am also actively recruiting student managers for our team this year – please let me know if someone is interested.
  5. We are going to getting a “third kit” and requesting extra varsity uniforms so everyone has the same uniforms making it easy to shuffle kids from one team to another without issue of new uniform or putting them in one from 1952.
  6. We will be running the JV and V differently. For each game we will be selecting 18 players for the “Varsity Roster” based on performance in training/fitness etc. It will be a meritocracy. If you do not make this 18 man roster, you will play Junior Varsity assuming health permits. This will hopefully provide both incentive and motivation for players to keep their positions and hope for others that if they play well and practice well, a spot on the varsity roster will be there for them.

Up and Coming:

  1. Finding out when the free physicals are
  2. Getting final designs for third kit
  3. Getting in shape. – fitness standards will be higher (more old school Stewart standards this year) so get running and working on speed, strength, and agility.

Saturday Update

Calendar:

After Wednesday of this week, the regular season comes to an end. For JV, there are no playoffs so your season is over 😦 All double rostered players will continue with Varsity and I am likely to expand the Varsity roster to include a few more JV’s so we can continue to play full field in practice for training. I have posted the district schedule and my guess at the Colonial League schedule for playoffs. Please clear weekday calendar for the next few weeks as if we are not playing, we will be practicing.

Yesterday’s Game

The good:

  • Some nice combinations at times
  • Rocco getting that goal
  • Watching JV players linking up with Varsity
  • Another clean sheet

The needs to improve:

  • Our intensity – against southern lehigh and earlier in the season, we were on every 1st ball, 2nd ball, etc and that has dropped – one of my main goals this coming week will be to get back to that.
  • Our maturity – this goes with number one, but our warmups and our attention and focus must be higher as we prepare for games – I will work hard to improve that
  • Our passing in final third – we have gotten better slipping Gigi through from deeper (Braden had some nicely weighted passes again here) but we are still lacking consistent quality passes in that final third. Harnit did have a nice pass to the top of the 18 yesterday.
  • Our attention and anticipation in the back. We still have a tendancy to switch off from time to time.

Responsibility:

  • All responsibility for the team’s occasional shortcomings reside with me. Each loss, each performance. The boys are wonderful and the responsibility lies with myself and my coaches to try to get the best out of them each day.

Thanks:

  • I appreciate Brian Walsh for volunteering to operate the Veo camera and get the game recorded. I will upload it when I am done writing this up! Thanks so much!

Looking Ahead

  • Varsity Practice Monday will be structured differently. We will work with smaller groups at a time to improve play. Details on this to be posted later
  • Our goal is to improve every day. I am so excited for what this team can do in the playoffs. Let’s make dreams come true boys.

Tough Humble Together

Update and Notes 9/30

Analyzing the win:

It was a signature win for the program and a very important win for us now. It is CRITICAL that it be unpacked to see what is different about how we played compared to how we were playing. Some highlights and thoughts:

  1. Danny was very vocal in the back moving his pieces around. This gave us a lot of solidity.
  2. We won FAR MORE 1st, 2nd, and 3rd balls. We got in trouble when we didn’t. It is among the MOST IMPORTANT things we need to do and everyone was trying to do it, from Braden through the midfield to our backline.
  3. We played with an edge and a passion that had been somewhat missing in the last tough stretch. Focused, strong, passionate play is ESSENTIAL against any opponent.
  4. We played together and had each other’s back.

Never lose focus of what it takes to win. The formula NEVER changes. Personnel and shape might change to deal with what we have and what different teams bring but the formula is ALWAYS the same.

Looking Ahead:

  1. Practice today will be a recovery practice with focus on loosening the muscles and legs and refining our shape from yesterday. We will end a little earlier today – around 4:15-4:30 PM.
  2. SAME ENERGY AND FOCUS for Northwestern and we win again. You ARE AND CAN BE AN AMAZING TEAM WHEN WE DO THINGS THE WAY WE CAN DO THEM.
  3. Non-double rostered JV’s are NOT REQUIRED to attend the game with Northwestern tomorrow. We love having you and encourage you to come but it is NOT required.

Players with Injuries:

Please report to Trainer Room today at 2:15 to get treatment. Ben will be there.

Video from Game:

I am looking for a volunteer to help record games on Veo. I have tried but I am too busy with the team and my phone too old (maybe me too). If you would like to help with this, I can give you the login credentials and show you how to do it. Thanks! In the meantime I will work with our AD to try to get videos from other teams we have played including yesterday.

Some notes on the new system

1. It’s something we are going to try – we have to be open to change to get better. We still have some holes to plug we don’t want good teams to exploit.

2. Outside backs – Justin, Nolan, Keerat, Andrew, Noah, Kyle, Jayden, etc. – LOOK at the ball carrier. If they are not being pressured, back off the opposing winger (Dillard style) to avoid getting exposed and only go after them once the ball comes in and prevent turn. PREVENT the turn. IF the ball carrier is under duress (we are pressuring them), SHUT OFF THE WINGER (Stewart style) and make them suffer in the trap. This is the best of both worlds. In other words, READ THE PASSER as well as the winger. If the passer has time, we need to be cautious of the ball behind and wait for the pass to come in to pressure the winger. If they are under WARRIOR pressure, shut off and make their life insufferable. We will call this hybrid of approaches the “STELLARD”.

3. CDM’s – we will have one sit deeper screening the centerbacks or covering for an exposed overlapping fullback while the other jumps into the midfield to mark out higher and support our attacking play. This must be coordinated and disciplined. We will decide on this in the lineup.

4. Fullbacks – you will need to adventurous and active but also very SMART. You must read the play. You MUST pick the right times to bomb up the field (available for the overlap or switch of field). In this system…YOU provide the width so be active. If we lose possession in the midfield, you will need to recover fast like rabid wolves are after you.

5. Crowded midfield – this is a blessing and a curse. Crowd the middle and get narrow and encourage the pass out wide – then pressure blocking passing lanes. Mark out their midfielders with ours. The curse comes in possession and not getting in each others way. I want to see creative runs to get in behind the backline. Expand. If they want to play a high line – hit gigi nice and easy through on the ground and let him run at them.

I know this was short notice and not much time but I think the experiment will be worth it. Let’s go WARRIORS!!!!

Banging on the door

We pushed and prodded Bangor, including a wonderful header from Beezo that their GK had to go full stretch to save. We tried some different things but in the end we could not break through the SLATE wall Bangor had built for us. The field was tough for how we like to play. JV lost a tough won 3-2 with two goals from Ben Taube. Lucas Parada was man of the match and provided rigidity to the back line. I am proud of them – nice job leading them Rocco!

The good:

Our backline held the line again. 4 Straight clean-sheets. It will be 5 by the end of Tuesday. Great job to Connor, Owen, Keerat, Nolan, and Noah.

Our midfield works so hard always. Dillard, Danny, Steven, and Harnit go full gas. Danny won so many challenged headers, Dillard is always there to collect the second ball, Steven harrasses and finds the ball and Harnit ran 70 yards to stop a counter. He is our MAN OF THE MATCH.

When we strung together our quick passes and moved the ball quickly we looked good and created our most promising chances.

I heard players taking responsibility for their play – Braden and Danny came to mind (others did it too) – when something went wrong, they owned their part in it. They are amazing players and were humble enough to own any mistake. We can all learn from that!

The looking to improve:

When we get frustrated, we have a tendency to start to take it out on each other – unfortunately a tough human instinct. I talked about this on the bus. Dealing with frustration in a useful way is part of maturing. We will get better at it. We MUST always stay together.

Breaking down a parked bus. Quick lateral movement and looking far post to take advantage of their shift. They really left very little space in the shooting areas so we will work on this.

Moving away from Hero Ball – the idea of hoping someone will make 3 guys miss and pound a rocket from 20 yards. This discourages smart runs and creative play. Every one of our players is a hero but we MUST link up more – quick passes!

It is frustrating not to win, particularly when you control the game like we did. That said, I am blessed with a wonderful team and great boys – all of them. We will be back at it Monday and look to take out our angst against those Blue Bombers of Palmerton.

Pictures and Respect

Pictures went great! Those of you who could not be there, we will see when a make-up can be taken with the whole team again later in the season along with individual shots. Christmas City was prompt and efficient. Great job!

Our walk-through was unfortunately slightly tempered by a lack of listening/respect. Our second word of our core theme this year is HUMBLE. Good players hang on every word their coaches say in order to listen to how to be better or most importantly – how to be a better player for the TEAM. Would a college coach want to see players sitting plucking at the grass during a walk through? Would a community coach? Make your best impression every day. We have so many players who listen intently and want to be coached. If you were one of those parked on the grass, shoot me an email and apologize. We all make mistakes. Boys to men. I love you all and I want to see us win these victories over ourselves. These are life lessons and I’d be a lousy coach if we lowered our standards here. Our coaches love the team too much, have accomplished so much as players and coaches, and know way too much soccer to have anyone tune them out.

On Monday we will do the walk through again (We will report at 4:00 PM for this, earlier than the 4:30 PM time I had originally planned). Hopefully this time with EVERY soul all in – with ears, heart, and humility.

Looking Ahead:

Monday 8/18 Friendly – Pocono Mountain East (WAIS) – Wear BLUE home uniforms

4:00 PM Report and Walk Through

4:30 PM Support the girls soccer team

5:00 PM Warm-up

5:30 PM Varsity Scrimmage – We will either work in JV players as the game continues or run a separate JV scrimmage. I will need to see what the PM East coach says when I see him.

Tuesday 8/19 Practice

3:00-4:45 PM

Wednesday 8/20 Friendly – East Stroudsburg North (WAIS) and Dieruff (Tri scrimmage)

3:20 Report

3:30 Warm-up

4:00 Varsity Scrimmage and same thoughts as Monday on JV

Thursday 8/21 Light Practice

3:00-4:45 PM

Friday 8/22 @Kutztown 3:00 PM

Departure time from high school 1:30 PM

TOUGH – HUMBLE – TOGETHER