Defenders! Get your celebrations up!

By: Sam | June 3rd, 2009

(Photo: Andrew Katsampes | isiphotos.com)

Defenders score so infrequently that they should take a moment — right now — to work out in their minds what they will do when they score a goal, especially one of the quality of Alex Scott’s in the Breakers’ home tie against the Washington Freedom back on May 17th. This should prevent some embarassing moments and also raise the general entertainment value.

Rather than describe Alex’s blast from 25 yards, I’ll give over to her report on her blog on FoxSports …

Tony told me at half time i was making good runs and to keep on doing it, so thats all i did, no major change to my game. In the 49th minute, the ball got played into latham, who like always holds the ball up well. I overlaped down the right and she found me with a sweet through ball … that i ran onto, i could here kelly smith screaming for it in the box i do not know why i chose to ignore her because if you have kelly screaming for the ball of all players you want to pass the ball to it would be her because you know she can create magic, but for once i thought WHY NOT and i smacked that small piece of leather that we call a soccer ball (football if you are reading this back home) and it flew into the back of the net…

I love this piece of confession: ‘… WHY would you not pass to Kelly in the box?’

Alex continues …

My celebration was really whack. If i could go back and change that i would, i do not even think i did anything,ha. Now the oscar speach… i would like to thank Latham for her assisat, i would like to thank my teammates …

Alex was so surprised at her first WPS goal that her reaction was very cool: a little like, ‘it happens all the time’ … she really didn’t know what to do. Given her lack of preparation, she might have done some really dorky & contrived defender-type celebration thing — like row a boat, rock the baby, take off her shirt, etc. So — although Alex is cute — we were really quite fortunate there.

What interested me most is Alex’s report that her goal came after specific shooting work in practise that week …

Everyday at training Tony Dicicco allows players to work on things they may think is a weakness in their game or just generally to improve at the end of training. If you are a goalkeeper you tend to have to go out early before training to get a strong session in before the main one actullay starts. Sometimes Lisa Cole (assisstant coach) and kaite Shields (goalkeeper coach) will select some players who think will help the goal keepers work. Last week i went out early with a few other teammates and worked on crossing. This week the goalkeepers were going out early and lisa and katie had not asked me…gutted. I think a few of us still went out early hoping we may get in the session anyway. I think Lisa felt sorry for me and asked me if i wanted to join in and help the goalkeepers, well i answered… yeah why not, when really i was jumping up and down inside because i knew it was a shooting session (as a defender you are normally on the other side of drills like this) so i joined in. There was only 3 of us shooting, christine lilly, maggie tomaka and myself. We had a little competition going on with the keepers the whole session, they would say something like… “you will only score 6 out of 30 strikes”, to challange themselves and to challange us. Let me just tell you, sorry goalkeepers, but we beat them in all the drills!! we was hitting some sweet strikes.

Chalk one up for DiCicco. The goal came because Alex had not only visualized success in practise but she put success into effect in practise. This is what’s called practising well. And applause to Tony DiCicco for making it discretionary, which is to say ‘fun‘. By extension (and this is my basic point), part of that visualization exercise ought to be, “What am I going to do before we all get to the corner flag?” Something original, I hope; that would seal it.

It is also encouraging to hear that DiCicco has challenged Heather Mitts and Alex Scott, both, to get goals this year. Latteral backs playing up the field and forcing the opponent to play deep in their own end — and scoring from wide positions — will add a needed dimension to the Breakers’ threat, while it would also take pressure off Kelly Smith who too often carries the load up front.