Making Our Mark

Like many of the games this October, our concluding regular-season game started with clean uniforms and socks and ended with mud-soaked shoes, shorts, socks and jerseys. Currently, Nelson Field, on the UW-Stout campus looks more brown than green and is finally more mud than grass. After withstanding a wet, and lingering, snow storm, we took our home field for the last time this season with the expectation that we would, with the help of Whitewater, make our mark on the field. We did that...with every cut, and slide and step and dribble. Footprints remain in that mud, and in a way, those prints will remain year in and year out.

We took time yesterday to honor one of the players who has made her mark during practices, training sessions and games. Katie Zernikel, our only senior, has run countless steps on that field, and the mark she leaves has been tallied in record books and calculated in minutes. That mark, however, is arguably less powerful than the intangible one that she leaves in the hearts of those who know her.

I think it is human nature to want to leave a memorable mark, and it is apparent to me that those who support the UW-Stout soccer team desire to leave an enormous, positive impression on the women of this team. Repeatedly, through this year, the team has been hosted by amazing families and fed by generous parents. The players are surrounded by supportive and loving family and friends. They have been there in sun, in wind, in rain and logging a number of miles along the way. They cheer and console, congratulate and comfort. The microcosmic reality of sports competition brings to light the character of the players who play, but it also reveals the hearts of those who cheer them on. This team is incredibly lucky to have such supporting fans.

At Saturday's game, the UW-Stout Soccer community collected nearly 100 cans/boxes of food for the local food pantries. It will be a small contribution to that bigger cause, but any mark we make is an important one.

We are on to the post-season now, and we have a chance to go back to UW-River Falls to upset the third-seeded team and move on to the semi-finals of the WIAC conference. I am inspired by the drive this team has to make an impression, and we WILL certainly make our mark.

Remembering the Positives

Before the 2009 season started, I have to admit, I thought that this year the players would start to reap the benefits of their hard work. You hear it all the time in sports..."Oh, we're young" and "This is a rebuilding year", and I had hoped that those declarations would stop applying to the Stout team. However, I think I have learned some valuable lessons this year as a coach.

We are, indeed, a young team. Sixteen of our players are freshmen or sophomores, six are juniors and we have one lone senior. The juniors and senior we have are possibly past the "young" label, but when so much of our team are brand new faces who are trying to navigate our expectations and our systems for the first time, it takes some time to build.

Building takes patience and a deliberately positive approach. I admit that I was lacking a bit of both for some of this year. By nature, I am an incredibly competitive person with not as much patience as I like to tell myself I have. Any team who works as hard as this team does deserves a lucky bounce every once in a while, and too many times this year I have let myself get wrapped up in the frustrations of the last-minute losses. Nine games have been lost by one goal and five of those one-goal losses happened in overtime or in the last ten minutes of the game. This team deserves to be on the other end of some of those tight games.

This team continues to persevere. They have incredible chemistry and a willingness to keep going. Several players are continuing to improve, willing to learn and working tirelessly for that lucky bounce that is bound to come. They are connecting, they are defending, they are working and they are encouraging. Positive building is happening, despite what the record books might say.

We are not yet done with the 2009 season. We have three games in the span of four days this upcoming weekend, and I personally plan to take the approach of pointing out all the phenomenal things this group of women are doing. There are plenty of things to compliment, and even if this year has ended up being one of those "rebuilding" years, I want to make sure that we build with the best bricks we can.