Author: Beau Dure

The guy who wrote a bunch of soccer books and now runs a Gen X-themed podcast while substitute teaching and continuing to write freelance stuff.
soccer

Washington Spirit vs. Maryland Terrapins: Forget about it

Posted on by Beau Dure

On paper, it doesn’t look good for a pro team to lose to a college team. Particularly one that isn’t renowned as a national title contender (though that could change this year). Particularly when other NWSL teams are mopping the field with their college opponents.

But we have to repeat that the Washington Spirit that lost 2-0 at Maryland tonight is not the Washington Spirit team that will take the field in 10 days or two months. The Spirit dressed 15 players, then scratched Tiffany McCarty, who joined Colleen Williams, Kika Toulouse, Danielle Hubka and Candace Chapman as injury absentees. Holly King is back in college in Florida for another few weeks, and four players are away with the USA and Canada.

Not that the Spirit were particularly pleased after this encounter. Grumpiness spread over many of the players — aside from all the Maryland alumni posing for pictures with their former teammates.

Quick aside about that: Maryland has some passionate soccer fans who don’t seem to realize who played for their team last fall or two years ago. They yelled for the current players by name and argued with the officials. Sure, the game had no PA announcer to give the names of the players and rev up the voice for the Terp alumni. But I spoke with a group of fans who didn’t know the names Domenica Hodak or Jasmyne Spencer in the first place.

Spencer barely knew her teammates’ names, having just joined the team at the pregame meal. She got a good long run at forward and posed a few problems for her former defense, but the Spirit attackers weren’t quite in sync. Individually, many of them played well — Caroline Miller came close to settling some old ACC scores singlehandedly, and Stephanie Ochs was solid on the wing and in the middle. The chemistry wasn’t quite there, which is bound to happen to a team that just brought in a forward three hours ago. And as solid a worker as Spencer is, a 5-1 forward may not be the best target for an aerial cross. They’ll need to rework that alignment.

Surely some of the issues will pass. It’s easy to see how the missing players will fill important holes:

– Maryland got most of its chances on counterattacks. They easily could’ve won 4-0. But will the Spirit give up those chances when Ali Krieger and Robyn Gayle (and Candace Chapman, if healthy, and possibly Kika Toulouse) are at the back? Probably not.

– The Spirit had a lot of possession but lacked that incisive pass. Enter Diana Matheson, now busy with Canada.

– McCarty was the driving force behind the Spirit’s win over UNC. She also wasn’t on the field for this game.

So what do we know from this game, one of three games the Spirit will play in seven days with 14-16 players? Not much. About as much as we know from Major League Soccer’s preseason, which is generally an audition period, or Major League Baseball spring training, which is basically a feeding frenzy for shady collectibles dealers.

Some of the players on the field tonight won’t last past Monday’s roster cuts. Others will be typical rookies with moments of brilliance and a few growing pains. In the end, the Spirit will forget about this game — just as Maryland’s fans who attended tonight have apparently forgotten Spencer, Hodak, Skyy Anderson and Olivia Wagner. (Spencer took it in good humor. Might have a chance to post quotes tomorrow.)

As for the opening game April 14, I think everyone has two requests. Warmer and less windy.

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: An Easter Lilly for coaches and players

Posted on by Beau Dure

I envy soccer coaches of the 2020s. They will be able to call up apps that keep the attention of their easily distracted players to show them drills. (Yes, my first practices of the season included a few reminders that the most important part of the body in soccer isn’t the foot or the head — it’s the ears.)

We’re starting to see a few steps in that direction. The latest is an intriguing ebook from Kristine Lilly and Coerver Coaching. (HT: Equalizer Soccer)

The one issue I see: Like a lot of “youth soccer” publications and videos, the audience isn’t defined. Is it geared toward girls who want role models, like so many Mia Hamm publications? Is it geared toward soccer coaches who need drills and a good way to demonstrate them without running all over the field and losing their players’ attention? (Please?) Or is it geared toward parents who want to show their kids a few good moves they can try on their own? It’s all three, and that’s going to make this ebook difficult to market.

But for patient consumers, the good news is that the ebook seems to satisfy a couple of those audiences. If you’ve read the stories of the 99ers and North Carolina’s dynasty a million times over, you can skip all that and check out Lilly’s nifty moves on the field. (To nit-pick: “The Lilly” seems like a slower version of “The Cruyff.” But I can’t do the Cruyff effectively, so maybe I can try the Lilly sometime when my teammates won’t scream at me.)

Ebooks and apps are only going to get better and better. I’d love to get involved with them, honestly. We need electronic media to teach kids the game so it’s not left to a coach trying to hold the attention of 14 players who see a dog walking by the woods. We need coaching guides that don’t look like Civil War battle re-enactment plans.

(And it wouldn’t hurt to market them for boys AND girls, whether it’s Kristine Lilly or Brian McBride doing the demonstrations.)

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mma

The Ultimate Fighter 17, Episode 11: Bubba bounced

Posted on by Beau Dure

Last week … a couple of quarterfinals, and Ronda Rousey turned up for some grappleflirting. I was out of town, so check with Danny Downes.

This week … Uriah Hall finally fights again? That’s so exciting, I could swear Dana blinked more than usual in the opening credits.

Bubba McDaniel is worn down. Three fights and a lot of training in a short time will do that to you. Clint Hester starts getting his weight down just in case Bubba can’t go.

Also with Team Jones, Josh Samman, is pretty sure Jimmy Quinlan isn’t going to stand with him. “Jimmy’s going to shoot all the way from the other side of the cage.”

His teammates aren’t as confident, in part because Jimmy can hold people down and in part because Josh keeps getting hurt.

It’s a Frank Mir sighting! Anyone catch what he said?

Back to the ailing Bubba. “I don’t want to quit,” Bubba says. Jones says he had been waiting to hear that. “I don’t want to quit,” he says again. OK, good. “I don’t want to quit.” OK, we got it. “I lift things up and put them down.”

(Has anyone seen the techno mix of that ad? It’s not great, but it’s worth a quick peek. Here goes:)

We go to Team Sonnen briefly to hear Mr. Positive Chael tell Jimmy he’s fighting a lot better than he was a few weeks … oh, sorry, we’re back to Bubba. He goes for a blood test.

Fight day, but it’s Samman-Quinlan. So unless they reveal the blood test results between rounds, we’ll put the Bubba saga on hold briefly.

Round 1 — Jimmy does indeed virtually shoot from across the cage. Josh fights him off briefly, but Jimmy gets underneath and picks him for a slam. Josh tilts his weight, though, so Jimmy doesn’t get good control right away. Josh lands a few good elbows from the bottom, and Jimmy drips blood. Then Josh works a submission game from his guard. Then some simultaneous ear punches. It’s rare these days to see the fighter on the bottom dominating the fight, but that’s just what Josh is doing.

I see London, I see France, I see Jimmy Quinlan’s underpants. He should pull up his shorts so that he’ll at least be doing SOMETHING from top control.

Josh finally stands up and lands three big knees to the head. Jimmy crumples and turtles. Josh lands more double ear punches, this time atop Jimmy’s back. Jimmy taps to strikes, which is somewhat unusual unless Steve Mazzagatti is reffing. Which he is.

So now we’re back to Team Jones and Bubba. The blood tests are fine. Bubba may have a pulled muscle, but he’s got some adrenaline now that he knows he’s not having kidney failure or something.

Over to Team Sonnen, Chael thinks Uriah Hall is the greatest talent in the history of talent in any sport on any planet in any universe. But he sometimes lacks confidence. Chael takes Hall aside to do a Sonnen Mind Meld.

Summing up the next segment: They make weight. Uriah’s confident. Bubba isn’t. It’s about the closest you’ll ever come to seeing a guy say “I have no chance” in pre-fight hype.

Fight starts, Herb Dean is the … it’s over. Bubba’s on the mat, asking why his eye is messed up. Sonnen tells Hall he’s a contender. Replay shows a knee to the body, a straight right to Bubba’s eye, then a couple of punches on the ground before Herb Dean wisely stepped in.

Dana White on Hall’s KOs: “You don’t even wanna clap. You feel bad clapping. … This guy is the nastiest guy in Ultimate Fighter history.”

The remaining fighters: Each team’s No. 2 pick (Samman, Hall) and … each team’s last pick (Dylan Andrews, Kelvin Gastelum). So the fairest thing would be Samman-Gastelum and Hall-Andrews. Right?

The guys come in. Samman says everyone knows the final is made for him and Hall. He wants to beat Gastelum and set up the “biggest finale in TUF history.” Andrews says nothing. Hall can’t stand Josh and wants to fight him, but he knows that’s just an emotional thing. Gastelum wants Andrews because he thinks he can beat him. When the other options are Samman and Hall, that makes sense.

But the coaches want to see their top guys fight right away. Will Dana go with his coaches or his promotional instincts telling him a Samman-Hall finale could be huge?

The answer is … promotional instincts. It’s Josh vs. Kelvin. Then Uriah vs. Dylan. That’s why Dana makes the big bucks.

He explains: “My educated guess – Josh and Uriah are probably the best. Now we’re going to find out if I’m right or I’m wrong.”

Scenes from the next episode: Only four battle-tested competitors … does anything happen in the house in the last couple of weeks?

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soccer

Washington Spirit vs. North Carolina Tar Heels: Free subs!

Posted on by Beau Dure
mccartyJ
Tiffany McCarty set up one goal and scored the other.

So I went to an NWSL preseason game and a college game broke out!

A sizable portion of the Maryland Soccerplex crowd wore Carolina blue and broke into a “TAR! … HEELS! …” chant, despite the efforts of Washington uber-fan Stewart Small to interject “SPIRIT!!” The teams played with college substitution rules. For a while, North Carolina’s players outhustled their opponents to every ball and dominated play.

Then Tiffany McCarty broke down the left flank and centered for Carolina killer Caroline Miller, who lashed home the rebound of her own shot, and the professionals restored order against the mighty college dynasty.

“That girl (Miller) has scored against us consistently,” UNC’s legendary coach Anson Dorrance said of the former Virginia player.

Then Dorrance remembered McCarty from her Florida State days. “Actually the other girl was an absolute thorn in our side for four years.”

McCarty was the player of the game. She didn’t officially get an assist on Miller’s 27th-minute goal because Miller’s initial effort was saved. But she was indeed the “absolute thorn” Dorrance remembered from ACC play, and she doubled the Spirit lead in the 47th minute on a superb breakaway.

Stephanie Ochs, usually the target player in the Spirit’s three-pronged attack, sprang McCarty up the middle of the field. McCarty held off a challenge and made substitute keeper Bre Heaberlin guess before calmly finishing as she has so many times in Spirit practice so far.

Carolina managed little the rest of the way.

In the pressbox and on Twitter, we all had a few laughs about playing the game under college substitution rules at Dorrance’s insistence. He was far from apologetic afterwards. “We’re trying to develop our team for next fall,” Dorrance said.

Why not use spring games to develop players for pro play and international play? “The sort of player that ends up on the national team is not subbed out,” he said.

And he had one of those players in Kealia Ohai, Heaberlin’s teammate on the U.S. Under-20 team and the lone scorer in the World Championship final. Plenty of Carolina players could match the Spirit’s speed in a foot race. Ohai was one of the few who could match the actual speed of play, where one- and two-touch play is the norm. “In college, it’s three,” Ohai said.

In the long run, the substitution issue didn’t matter. The typical pro game doesn’t include a change on the fly when a player leaves with a bloody nose — Dorrance couldn’t cite regulations but chalked up to a ref with a brain — but the revolving door at the sideline didn’t affect too drastically.

If anything, the waves of subs provided a good test for the thin Washington team, which had several players on national team duty (UNC was similarly missing Crystal Dunn) and several others injured. Carolina pressed Washington early, beating the Spirit players to the ball and keeping the Spirit stuck in their own end of the field much of the first half-hour. Exhausted UNC midfielder Brooke Elby seemed relieved to see a substitute replacing her in the 28th minute.

“There are going to be some teams that are going to run and gun,” Washington’s elder stateswoman Lori Lindsey said. “They were a good test for us in terms of athleticism.”

The Spirit eventually responded to the high tempo, and coach Mike Jorden let a couple of his own players take a break and return.

“They came out the first 15 minutes and really took it to us,” Spirit coach Mike Jorden said. “As the game went on, we played better.”

Notes:

– Missing Spirit players, national team duty: GK Ashlyn Harris, D Ali Krieger, D Robyn Gayle, M Diana Matheson. Missing due to nagging injuries: D Candace Chapman, M Colleen Williams, F Megan Mischler, D Kika Toulouse. That left Washington with 16 players dressed.

– The absences also left Washington with a makeshift center-back pairing of Tori Huster and Casey Berrier, the latter of whom just arrived in camp after being waived by Kansas City. Berrier struggled at first, with Domenica Hodak racing over to stop a breakaway in her area, but she picked up the pace as the game went on and stayed in for nearly 60 minutes.

– Dorrance didn’t understand the question when I asked for reaction to the closing of Pepper’s Pizza, which is almost as much of a Chapel Hill institution as he is. His players did. “We’re really sad about that,” Ohai said.

Other game reports (will add links as they come in — feel free to add in comments):

– Official Spirit site

– All White Kit

– Equalizer Soccer

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rugby

Pack mentality hurting rugby

Posted on by Beau Dure

I have to admit I’ve always been frustrated with the flow of rugby. Not the offshoot of “rugby league” is any better — come on, folks, just put on pads and play gridiron football if you’re going to run things that way — but traditional rugby union just stops and starts far too often.

It’s not just me. The Economist sees the gamesmanship in scrums in particular as a thorny problem with no easy solution.

In the infamously limp match between Scotland and Wales, only three of the 13 scrums awarded were properly contested. Whole minutes at a time ticked by with no action. Craig Joubert, the South African referee, grew frustrated. So did the players. So did television viewers. And so did the 67,000 who had paid to watch.

via Scrums in rugby union: A muddy mess | The Economist.

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mind games, soccer

No Monday Myriad this week

Posted on by Beau Dure

Check the Twitter feed to get up to speed on world championships in speedskating and women’s curling. Maybe X Games Tignes as well.

Then here are a couple of things you should be / could be following this week:

– Soccer: U.S. men at Mexico, 10:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, ESPN. No pressure.

– Chess: Candidates’ Tournament. Winner plays Vishy Anand for the world championship this fall. Is it Magnus Carlsen’s time already? Standings/webcasts/etc.

And keep an eye out for NWSL preseason news.

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olympic sports

Olympic boxing: Pro rules

Posted on by Beau Dure

Boxing safety is more art than science. Consider this:

“There’s no evidence protective gear shows a reduction in incidence of concussion,” Butler said. “In 1982, when the American Medical Association moved to ban boxing, everybody panicked and put headgear on the boxers, but nobody ever looked to see what the headgear did.”

AIBA’s executive committee unanimously voted to add head guards to amateur competition in April 1984, and they stayed in place through eight straight Olympics.

But the headgear has long been criticized for diffusing the impact of a blow and allowing fighters to continue sustaining more head shots for a longer stretch of time. The gear also offers no protection to the chin, where many knockout blows land in boxing, while the bulky sides of the device impede fighters’ peripheral vision, preventing them from seeing every head blow.

So the headgear is going away — except for women’s boxers, for some reason. The story says nothing about the gloves, though.

But wait, there’s more:

The amateur sport also is moving to a pro-style, 10-point scoring system, discarding the latest version of the much-criticized computer punch-count systems implemented after the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Each fight will be scored by five ringside judges with the traditional 10-9 or 10-8 rounds familiar to fans of professional boxing.

So the inaccurate system they’ve been using for the last 20-some years will be replaced with a subjective system. That’s … progress?

Olympic boxing drops head guards, changes scoring.

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Who cares about the stakes?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Earlier this month, I did an interview with CBC radio about Ontario’s proposal to get rid of official scores and standings for soccer players under age 12. I made a passing reference to my over-30 coed indoor team and our overly competitive games with nothing at stake but a T-shirt for a division champion.

The CBC wasn’t there to capture it, but a couple of days later, we had a perfect illustration of the point.

The problems started before the game. I had never seen a roster eligibility challenge in an over-30 coed rec league before, but lo and behold, we had one. The result: We had only two female players, which meant they would have to play the whole way.

Our opponents were rather smug about it, too. They might have been a little less conceited if we had challenged a couple of their players, but we weren’t going to go there. We’ve paid money to play soccer. We just want to play.

They spent the first 10 minutes of the game establishing a “physical” presence on the field. I was tempted to toss off my gloves and walk off. This wasn’t fun.

Thankfully, the ref took control. He started blowing his whistle, which clearly startled some of our opponents. They were used to whacking people in the back with impunity.

At the end of the game, I went up to thank the ref for minimizing our bruises. I had to wait, though, because someone from the other team was yelling at him. I don’t speak much Spanish, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, “GREAT GAME! HEY, DID YOU SEE THAT MESSI GOAL LAST WEEK? THAT WAS SICK!”

Oh, by the way, they won.

So even after winning both the game and an unprecedented (as far as I know) pregame roster challenge, this guy needed to voice his complaints about the ref having the temerity to whistle maybe five of the 50 fouls they committed during the game.

We know we lost the game, and we know our record this season. We don’t know theirs. They don’t know ours.

And that’s why I’m a little skeptical of the idea that players and coaches will start focusing on the right way to play when there’s little at stake and no standings to peruse. Overly aggressive people need other means of restraint. Like a good ref. Or maybe having a few beers before the game. (That won’t work at youth level, of course. Especially not for the parents.)

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