After a sound defeat by a gifted Cate team recently, I sent the following message to my boys [the varsity soccer team]:

I want you to know you behaved magnificently yesterday, and I am forever impressed with your mental toughness, spirit, and ability to hang together as a team under challenging circumstances. You never gave in, and that shows the heart of a champion. It is a distinct honor to coach you.

Looking at both games as a whole it strikes me that Cate was about two goals-a-game better and the difference was simply their ability to finish, which leads me to the crystal clear fact that we were able to create excellent chances on goal in the first half from early crosses, but that for reasons not fully understood, we failed to keep them coming after the break, and generated only one good chance on goal in the 2nd half (Willie’s excellent run and shot).

I believe our best chance to beat Cate (and any really accomplished team), should we meet in the post-season tourney, is to keep early crosses coming for the full 80 minutes. As you know, we have players capable of doing this well. So, in every game we play we will emphasize early crosses even more until it is natural to employ them several times each half. To win in the post-season we must be able to score against the excellent teams.

Now we must dedicate ourselves to continuing to play 80 minutes of superb soccer every game, and then see where the chips fall.

In this note we find the dominant characteristic of Thacher soccer teams over the years: a willingness to play with great passion and energy from the very beginning to the bitter end, regardless of the situation. And then there is always looking forward to the next practice with a plan to improve. The final whistle of our final game will mark my last look forward to the next practice, as I will step down after over thirty seasons of coaching our soccer players from 3rd team to varsity, boys and girls. It has been a great run, full of passion and drama, victory and defeat. I could not possibly have asked for more.