August 2014 President’s Letter
My wife Bun and I coached AYSO soccer for nine years before the turn of the century. Her three kids (my stepchildren) all played and we enjoyed passing on the laughably miniscule amount of knowledge we had about the "beautiful game" to the youngsters in our charge.
We did have one advantage. We could, and eagerly did, read about soccer; how to play it and how to coach it. We figured if we could keep just a little ahead in our coaching beyond what the players knew we would be all right.
One kid we had on one of our teams, Matt Sprague, was a scrappy lad. He lived in our neighborhood and he and my stepson were good friends all through school. Matt was slight in build. But, well, scrappy...
We moved the kids around a lot on the field so they could have the opportunity to play different positions over the course of a season. Matt liked to play forward because he was good at scoring goals. But we also did some goalie training with him. We taught him, among many things, how to keep his legs together when he was scooping up a straight-on rolling ball. A ball thus addressed cannot roll through one's legs and into the goal.
Like many kids, boys especially, Matt didn't much like listening to instructions. He figured he was a good enough athlete to naturally be good at whatever he was doing. For the most part that was true - but only up to a point. It does take coaching to bring out the finer points of a game and to realize one's full athletic potential.
So we had Matt in goal for one of our games. Although there had been a rain and the field conditions were far from ideal, he was doing a good job blocking shots and then punting the ball away. But he hadn't been severely tested until a kid from the other team blasted a shot that went skidding and sliding across the wet grass toward the goal.
Matt moved toward the ball, bent down, and then, suddenly, snapped his bony knees together. The wet and slippery ball went through his hands but bounced off his shins out in front of him. He pounced on it like a cat capturing a mouse. At that moment he realized that he had done something that he had been coached to do, and that the technique had worked perfectly. He shot a beaming smile over to the sideline. Bun and I, emotionally involved not just in the game but also in the kids, each got a lump in our throat. It was a supremely satisfying incident; one of the highlights of our coaching careers, evidenced by the fact that I remember it clearly some 20 years later.
As a platinum sponsor of the Miller Energy BTR Criterium Bike Race, KBC is given six race registration vouchers to pass out to worthy parties in our organization. I put together an e-mail raffle and gave the vouchers to various KBC members who wrote in to participate.
One of the vouchers went to Derek Dalzell, a KBC/CMS race team member. I delivered the voucher to him before a Wednesday night ride and we got to talking a little bit about the upcoming race. I told him that I had noticed, when photographing the event in years past, that some riders, during the final sprint, took a line that led them wide of the official's platform at the finish line. That, I told Derek, meant that they traveled several feet further than those riders who chose the more inside route. A few feet over the course of a 45 minute race doesn't sound like much. But in races that are often decided by the width of a bike tire, it is a great advantage to shave off any extra distance to get to the line first.
BTR race day arrived and Derek and his CMS compatriots in the CAT 4 event rode well. Their ambition was to put him on the podium and they all worked hard to achieve that. In the end though, it was up to Derek to finish strong and to finish well. He stood on his pedals and gave it all he could - taking the inside line by the official's platform. And he crossed the tape before anyone else...
I'm not saying I have a future in coaching. But Matt Sprague did stop that shot. And Derek Dalzell did finish first in CAT 4 in the BTR race. As I see it, that makes me about 100% in my coaching endeavors so far. Looking for some advice from someone with a proven track record? Buy low and sell high. That's the ticket. And go ride your bike.
Zolton Cohen, KBC President
