Evaluating the outcomes of these critical moments gave me a foundation to measure whether my college team could get better at influencing momentum in games .
I started by looking back at the previous season to see how successful we were in these critical moments : Was there any consistency to whether we were scoring or being scored on in the first or last five minutes of each half ? When we scored , how often did we score again within the next five minutes ? When we gave up a goal , how often did we give up another within five minutes or how often were we able to get a goal back for our team in that time period ? Looking at these moments would give me a backdrop to start with and statistics with which I could measure improvement or regression for the following season .
Although the critical moments of the game were where I would focus my attention on these statistics to look at the past to compare to the future , the education of the players would have to be broader . To help the players with this area , I would need to first educate them on what momentum is and how to recognize it . By the time these young women have come to college , they have played in hundreds of games in their careers . Although many had heard of this term , most had never really given much thought to it or realized that they might be able to do something to help either maintain or shift the flow of the game . So , the first part of this educational process was to guide the players on how to recognize momentum and how to interpret the feelings of good vs . bad momentum = high energy , enthusiasm , flow , confidence vs . struggle , low confidence , poor touches , bad decisions , recurring moments of frustration . Once they could define and recognize it , they needed to learn the tools to utilize in that moment of revelation .
In order to help the players with the recognition piece , my assistants and I would look for moments in training when momentum seemed to be fairly evident in small-sided games or other competitions . We would ask questions of the players about how they felt , what their thought processes were , and what actions they were taking in those moments . The coaching staff would also utilize film from games to go over segments where momentum seemed to be clearly with one team or the other and ask similar questions . Once this idea of recognizing momentum was established with players , the next and more important work began .
As coaches , we are always trying to control as much as we are able . Since soccer is a free-flowing game with no timeouts , we are restricted to yelling from the sidelines , hoping that something from training stuck with them , or that the restart we brilliantly came up with will make a difference in the score line at the end of the match . In order to empower my players to take the initiative to influence momentum ( not sure you can actually control it ), they needed real actions that could be utilized on the field , during the flow of the game .
The first area that was deemed critical to this task revolved around the psychological aspect . I needed the players to be better at controlling their emotions in those aforementioned
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