Our group, shown here earlier this month, learned a tough lesson today from Coach Jeff King. (Photo by Paul Tenorio/The Washington Post)
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There are so many memories from soccer practice fields that I can draw from when I have to relate something that happens in my life, especially now in my day-to-day swimming.
These stories are two that I had forgotten until this morning.
The first is from high school soccer. My freshman year, I had played varsity and started at sweeper. I was horrible. I mean really bad. I tried to be too technical and forgot to just be physical. My team won one game, it was over Stuart, which was winless.
My sophomore year we came into training camp hoping to be better but with no idea what to expect. Our center-midfielder from the year before was moving back to sweeper, I was moving up to center mid. We felt confident after some strong scrimmages, and I remember going through the motions as a team early in a training session when it was still cold enough outside that it must have been near preseason.
Our coach, Zeff Yusof, now the A.D. at Georgetown Visitation, gathered us in and ripped into us.
“Why in the bloody hell am I out here,” he asked. Yes, he was British. Yes, this is paraphrasing from a memory going all the way back to spring 2000.
“Why am I out here to train you guys if you don’t even care. If there isn’t dedication from the team to actually get a benefit of the training session?”
Multiple things had set him off, not just our laziness but the fact that one of our key players was skipping the session. We all looked around. Zeff fumed a bit more, then turned and left. He told us he wasn’t going to waste our team if we didn’t care.
Suddenly, our team turned much more serious. We ended up winning 10 games that year and finishing third in the district. We were upset in the first round of districts, but the team was light years ahead of where it had been the previous year. That talk was the turning point.
A couple of years later, my club soccer team, Team America Premier, was playing in a crucial game at Occoquan field. I remember we were just poor in the first half, lacking pace and creativity, defending sloppily and losing by a goal or two.
Our coach, Clyde Watson, now an assistant coach with the Washington Freedom, was never a screamer. Still, when we needed to hear it, he’d let us know. We all came off the field expecting him to just let us have it.
Instead he walked over, looked at us as we sat on the grass under the hot sun and he put his hand on his head.
“I just don’t have anything to say to you,” he said. And he walked away.
We all looked around at each other and sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, our captain spoke up and said a few things. A couple other guys talked about what they saw on the field. We went back out there and scored three or four in the second half and walked away with an easy win.
The point of these stories? Sometimes a coach has to send a message. Sometimes it takes a radical move to teach a group a lesson that sticks.
Today was one of those days.
After going through a set at practice that was a mix of 400/100s and 50s kick, the feeling in practice was that people just weren’t feeling it. I had been warned in the locker room that Jeff wasn’t in a good mood and when I walked up to him (I was again a couple of minutes late to practice). I saw him watching someone slowly go through warm-ups and he shook his head in disgust.
I knew he wasn’t going to tolerate half-efforts today.
Still, I think everyone felt a bit slow today. I dont know what it was. Maybe it was that some were coming off taper. Maybe that it had been a crappy weather week. Maybe it’s because everyone got some of my stress level via osmosis. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the end of the quarter in high school and everyone is stressed.
The point is, Jeff had seen enough. At about 5:45 he gathered us up and let us have it, explaining that he felt we were dogging it, that he had not seen one person working hard in and out of the walls, that he had planned another set but that we were moving so slowly there wasn’t time now.
Instead, he said practice was over. He was going to work with the kids tapering for Turkey Clause.
And then he walked away.
No one got out of the pool at the time. Everyone stayed in and worked on something — vertical kicking, flip turns, swimming, etc. Still, it was a moment that made me think of how that has changed me in past years and changed teammates of mine, too.
I expect nothing but a big-time performance from everyone in the pool tomorrow. And boy, did I really feel like an athlete again just from getting chewed out. I’m not saying I liked it, but it was bound to happen.
Now it’s up to us to show Jeff the difference.
Washington Post reporter Paul Tenorio will train with a swim club over the next few months and chronicle his journey as he attempts to transform from regular guy/sports reporter to competitive swimmer — everything from his waistline to his best times.
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