u/jbmach3

One of my goalkeepers is going into her junior year and gets nervous about contact with players. She is improving but still just needs that extra ounce of aggression. She played very well in the game yesterday (we won) but still hesitated twice around contact.

After the match was over and the team finished up the post-game talk and cheer, I told her we had one more drill left to do and gave her a ball to hold.

I then stood with my hands on my hips, engaged my core, and said “knock me over”. She was shocked and said “what?!”. “Knock me over in a way that is legal, so no grabbing or anything like that”. She was laughing and clearly feeling awkward about it, because who intentionally knocks over their coach?

After the first couple the other coaches started cheering her on. I gave her tips and on about the 8th time she knocked me back hard enough that I tripped (in my flip flops) and fell backwards.

She was laughing but was clearly proud that she was able to do it. Definitely seemed like a step in the right direction. She just needs experience with intentionally going into contact and she’ll do fine.

Saw a post about communication and figured I’d share this story that I still chuckle at today. This would have been around 2006-2007 when I was a goalkeeper for a fairly competitive club in NJ.

Every goalkeeper has their systems and their habits. One of mine was to yell “mark up!” when a ball goes out for a corner so that my guys would mark an opponent and I could see where the risks are and organize my defense before the attacking team is ready to put the ball back in play.

I noticed that one defender (my right back) would frequently end up hanging out above the top of the 18 even if there was no one else around. Finally after about 2 months he comes to me and says “why do you always tell me to go up on corner kicks?”….