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Coach Morris for AAA COY!

24/7, I know you arent taking anything away from her. I understand where you are coming from def. Its just she is the only senior on the team, only 2nd year shes ever played, and she wants to help the team out. She figures if she can score 6 and put a team away by herself she wants to. Its kinda good that she can do this to put MC on the map a little bit. MC has never had a player with her athletic ability before so its nice for them. lol

My problem with stats has always been this: The most visible and celebrated stat is goals scored. It's a shame that, by the stats, the credit for scoring a goal goes to the person who just happened to touch the ball last before it entered the goal. While I realize there is an art to finishing and being a goal scorer, we all know that it takes more than one player to score a goal. On the other end of the field, the goalkeeper gets the negative stat for goals against. Again, more than that one player are responsible for giving up each goal.

Coach P, exactly. Difficult to explain to many who don't know soccer that when your team HAS the ball, they are all a part of the offense; when your teams doesn't have the ball, they are all the defense. . .

Soccer matches that end 1-0 or even a draw can be wonderful to watch and with only a split second of scoring (or even none). AAA (along with all of our girl classifications) have some great players—many of whom do not fill a stat sheet.

P&Y: "Difficult to explain to many who don't know soccer that when your team HAS the ball, they are all a part of the offense; when your teams doesn't have the ball, they are all the defense. . ."

I strongly agree with your statement. I have always told my teams that, when the opponents have the ball, we have 11 defenders. When we have the ball, we have 11 attackers.

This is why, as a coach, I have usually refrained from using the term "defender" as one of the positions in our fomation. I prefer to use the term "back".

>>[24/7 Soccer] I don't understand the "slippery slope" statement.<<

I apologize for not being clearer. The problem is that when you start questioning one aspect of statistics, you find yourself on a "slippery slope" questioning a lot of the aspects of high school statistics. A major reason for this is that high school soccer is just so disparate. I agree that "9 goals" seems like a lot; but then again "3 goals" against a lot of teams seems like a lot to me. Scoring a goal against Dorman, Mauldin, Wando, Riverside, or Eastside (for example) is very different than scoring a goal against Orangeburg Wilkinson.

In addition, on a message board, it's difficult to find someone who doesn't have an agenda when pushing her or his opinion; so you have to take that into account as well. For example, I like Lexington -- so when I say that Lexingon does well you have to suspect that I have a bias toward that school. It doesn't mean that Lexington didn't do well; it just means that my opinion is more than a bit suspect.

In my opinion, it's a lot safer to celebrate the goal scoring accomplishments and any other individual accomplishments without an attempt at a lot of rigor -- that's best saved in high school for team accomplishments such as winning a region title, winning state, winning a tournament, etc. I like these kids getting recognition -- I think a lot of the problems we have in this area is when one poster believes that a compliment to one player is some type of implicit insult to another player. Heck -- for most of these ambitious kids they get rejection at some point -- from the national team on down -- so I figure we don't need to spend time rejecting their accomplishments here.

As "purpleandyellow" said, there are other venues in which to form opinions that are probably a bit more accurate. A premier or challenge team is a great place for that as is a state ODP team. Heck -- the best place is probably watching kids who make region and national pools. I remember last year watching Enzo Martinez have what I thought was a very average day in a high school game and then in the space of a few minutes he showed why he is a national pool player.

Besides, the truth is that there are people who get paid to make the individual judgements at the state and regional level -- from college to ODP coaches -- so in the long run, it's hard to escape the actual reality of all of this.

>>[Coach P]The most visible and celebrated stat is goals scored. It's a shame that, by the stats, the credit for scoring a goal goes to the person who just happened to touch the ball last before it entered the goal.<<

Couldn't agree more with this and with the other sentiments expressed in this vein. The good news is that I think the professionals who coach soccer in high school get this; this is the reason that kids like Julie Bolt and Blakely Mattern have been our players of the year in the last few years rather than a kid who scores 785 goals.

There are a lot of "garbage collectors" out there in high school. Even at forward, the kids who have my highest admiration are those that work the hardest and unselfishly create the most, regardless of who touches the ball into the goal.

P&Y: "Soccer matches that end 1-0 or even a draw can be wonderful to watch and with only a split second of scoring (or even none)."

I love to watch great defensive matches in any sport. Which places me in a small minority for most sports. I think this relates to the fundamental reason soccer is not a popular spectator sport in this country. The popular American sports have catered to the US fan's hunger for high scoring by changing the rules to promote more successful offense. Soccer has, rightfully in my opinion, refused to do this.

Chico: "Even at forward, the kids who have my highest admiration are those that work the hardest and unselfishly create the most, regardless of who touches the ball into the goal."

My team won a match this season in which all three of our goals were scored by midfielders. After the game someone used this fact to argue that I had the wrong players at the forward position. I politely pointed out that those "wrong" players created all three of the successful goalscoring opportunities from the forward position.

Coach P—great point. I know several players who are far more apt to score from Midfield than from forward, in fact.