Feb. 21, 2006
Columbia, S.C. – With temperatures rising and the weather warming up, the USC women’s soccer team started spring practice last week, beginning preparations for the fall 2006 season. Carolina returns a majority of players from last year’s team and will also add a strong group of newcomers in the fall. USC associate head coach Jamie Smith sat down recently to talk about the team’s spring practice schedule and how the Gamecocks look to improve on their performance last year.
Q: As your spring practice schedule begins, what are you focusing on in practice with your returning players as you begin preparation for the 2006 season?
SMITH: “We will address different things during spring practice. One or two days we will address the different sections of the field – forward, midfield and defender. For the most part, we are together as a group. On other days we will work on other things, like speed of play, moving off the ball. We try to take that and put it into a game setting whether it’s six to a side, seven to a side, whatever numbers we have on a specific day.”
Q: What do younger players have to learn when they come to South Carolina and how do they adjust to playing at the college level?
SMITH: “When you are in high school you usually have a lot more freedom to do what you want. When you come to college, you want to play within the framework of the team but you have to learn how to be the same player as you were as far as having freedom and taking chances and making mistakes and being ok as opposed to being scared and not wanting to mess up. One of the things we are encouraging our players right now is for them to try a lot of new things, make mistakes and that’s ok because it’s the only way to learn and get better. In training it doesn’t matter, you just have to learn.”
Q: How has your team responded in spring practice after last season?
SMITH:”(Our returning players) enthusiasm has lit a fire. They just want to play soccer and they love to play the sport. You have to be confident in your abilities and be ok with making mistakes, recovering and trying again. As a goal scorer, if you miss nine times, you might score on the 10th chance, but if you never take that 10th chance you never score that goal. As this groups grows older, they are becoming more confident with what they can do on the field.”
Q: What areas does the team have to address from last year? What is the team working on to get better for 2006?
SMITH:” The game of soccer is played in spurts and on a very rare day will you dominate a team in 90 minutes. Even the team you play well against will have 10 or so minutes of play here and there. The challenge of our team is can you whether a storm, can you survive a goal. That’s a big thing, can you survive a team that is putting pressure on net. I think unfortunately being as young as we were (last year), you saw a little bit of that and I think we gave up goals at bad times. We would control the majority of play and the opponent would score a goal and their confidence rises and ours drops. The challenge for this team this fall is to put teams away early if we can and we can’t, be mentally strong enough to handle a surge from another team.”
Q: How is the attitude of the players this spring? What have you noticed so far from them?
SMITH: “Our players are excited. They know that they underachieved this past fall and that they have to live with that record, carry it around with them all year. There is nothing you can do about it and you can’t hide from it. You also have to get beyond it and get better. You see them out here training and it is in their minds that they don’t ever want it to happen again. It did not represent the quality of this team and players. We would outplay teams, outshoot them and control the game, and then our record doesn’t reflect that. Their expectations for themselves and the program are much higher then what we achieved this past fall.”
