Cameron sighed.

  If this continued, he was going to hate soccer even more than he already did.

  CHAPTER 5

  COACH NEEDS HELP

  “The team showed no discipline,” Dad said to Cameron. They were standing on the sidelines as most of the players left with their parents. “You should have never lost the game. Don’t you agree?”

  Cameron nodded. When his dad was in a bad mood, it was smart to just agree.

  “And your coach definitely needs help, right?” Dad continued.

  Cameron nodded again.

  “Follow me,” his dad said, as he headed toward the parking lot.

  Coach Kelly had the trunk to her car open when they reached her. She lifted her gear bag and set it inside. When she turned and saw them, she smiled at Cameron.

  “Hey,” she said. “Good game. You gave it a hundred percent today. We can’t ask for much more than that. Great job, Cameron.”

  She smiled at his dad. “You should be proud of him.”

  “I spend a lot of time helping him understand the game,” James Jones said. “When it comes to soccer, rule number one in our house is making the smart choice. Glad it showed for Cameron out there today.”

  “We lost this one, but more often than not we win,” Coach Kelly said, looking up at Cameron’s father. “What I love is when the kids are giving it their best and having fun. It’s amazing how quickly their skills improve when you give them space to make mistakes.”

  “Never hurts to help them understand game strategy though,” James said.

  “True enough, but—” Coach started.

  “Glad we’re on the same page,” James said, interrupting Coach Kelly. “I’ve done some coaching myself.”

  “Nice!” Coach Kelly shut her trunk.

  “And I heard from one of the moms that you’ll be gone for a week or so to help your husband with his business,” James continued.

  “It’s a start-up,” Coach Kelly said. “We’re having fun building it from scratch. The team is in a solid position, and they can still meet without me. They’ll just scrimmage. Keeps them in shape and they have fun.”

  “Well, I’d be happy to help as an assistant coach until you’re back,” Dad said. “I’m pretty good at running practices. I have some great drills. I’ve also been certified by the National Soccer Association, so you can trust me.”

  Coach Kelly didn’t take long to think about it. “Sure. It never hurts for the players to get a different perspective on the game. It would be great if you spend about half of the practice letting them kick the ball around for fun. One of my foundations is that I encourage creativity too. I’m okay if they make mistakes because they can learn from it. Sound good?”

  “Sounds more than good,” James said. He shook hands with Coach Kelly. “Thanks. I think you’ll like what you’ll see when you get back. By the way, my name is James. I guess you can call me Coach James now.”

  CHAPTER 6

  PYLONS AND DRILLS

  When the whistle blew at the next practice, players turned around and stared in surprise. It was as if they had never heard a whistle before.

  “Come on in and listen up!” James’s voice carried clearly across the field. He waved for the players to join him by the sidelines where he’d set up a whiteboard on an easel.

  “Go ahead and sit,” he said, as they slowly started to gather around. “Get comfortable. This might take a while.”

  Cameron noticed the players giving each other looks of surprise. A few of them shrugged. Eventually, all of them sat down.

  “Coach Kelly is gone for the week,” James started addressing the players, “and she’s asked me to take over while she’s away. My name is James Jones, and I’m Cameron’s father. I’d prefer if you called me Mr. Jones, or even better, Coach Jones. I’ve been involved in coaching soccer for years. I thought I’d start by asking Cameron to pass along one of my favorite sayings. Cameron?”

  Cameron had heard it more times than he could count. Now all eyes were on him, and it didn’t feel good. “Alone, you can travel fast,” Cameron tried to say as confidently as he could, “but together, you can travel far.”

  “Thanks, Cameron,” Coach Jones said, as he turned back and stared at the blank faces of the other players. “The saying makes sense, right?”

  Nobody answered.

  Coach Jones continued. “Let me explain then. All of you are great players as individuals. You should be proud of yourselves. But if we work together and make smart choices, we can be even better as a team. Does that make sense?”

  When nobody answered, Coach Jones pointed to Kyle. “Make sense?”

  Cameron knew his Dad was asking Kyle because Kyle’s mistake had cost them the game-losing goal against the Chargers.

  Kyle waited a few seconds before he answered. “Sure.”

  “Good,” Coach Jones said. “So you should like what I’ve drawn up here.”

  He pointed at the easel and continued his lesson. “This is from the last game, just before the Chargers scored on us in the final minute and won the game.”

  He moved his finger over the drawing. “All the Os are you guys. All the Xs are the opposing team. You can see I’ve already drawn each player in position, about thirty seconds before the Chargers scored.”

  Coach Jones looked at Kyle again, then pointed at an O. “This is where you were, Kyle. You can see that you’re just short of midfield. You had possession of the ball at the time.”

  Kyle raised his hand.

  “Yes?” Coach Jones said.

  “I’m just curious as to how you know this,” Kyle asked.

  “I like to record the games and analyze them later,” Coach Jones explained.

  “That’s a lot of work,” Kyle remarked.

  “Thanks,” Coach Jones said.

  Unlike his dad, Cameron wasn’t sure Kyle had meant that as a compliment.

  “Now Kyle,” Coach Jones said, “don’t take this wrong. But you tried to get past the X in front of you and lost the ball.”

  Moving his hands quickly, Coach Jones pointed at one X, then another X, and then a third. “See how they are spread apart on the field like this? Turning the ball over to them put these players at a disadvantage. They couldn’t get back into play soon enough, because they were charging up the field.”

  Coach Jones pointed at one O, then another, then a third.

  “On the other hand, Kyle, just before you lost the ball, you could have kicked a short pass straight sideways here,” Coach Jones pointed at another O. “If you did that— made the smart choice—we would have kept possession. You know why?”

  Kyle didn’t respond, so Coach Jones continued talking.

  “The other players would not have been caught in a bad place,” he said. “Then you could have gone toward the sideline upfield. This would have drawn a defender to open up the middle and make it easy to advance the ball. Understood?”

  Nobody replied.

  “No problem,” Coach Jones said. “I’ve got some pylons. We’re going to set them up where the Xs were. Then each of you will take your positions. We’ll run the play over again. This time, Kyle, let’s see what happens when you make the smart choice and the short pass. I promise all of you will understand it much better when we practice it a few times.”

  Coach Jones blew the whistle and pointed to the field. “Let’s move!”

  CHAPTER 7

  NOT A SMART CHOICE

  The next afternoon, the Blazers were playing against the Volts. Coach Kelly had planned on rescheduling the game. Thanks to Cameron’s dad volunteering to help while she was away, the game was now on.

  Crossing midfield with the ball, Cameron saw the number 8 on the back of José Padilla’s jersey. José was medium build, with dark hair and quick feet. It was a smart choice to choose him as a target. Cameron made the short pass. José trapped it perfectly.

  A Volts player moved to cover Cameron and take away a return pass up the field.

  Cameron drifted backward.

  The Volts player faded away. It was clear they were spreading out for zone coverage. This meant choosing an area of the field to protect, instead of sticking with individual players to guard.

  That gave Cameron a chance to be open again. It wouldn’t help them advance the ball, but he was a safety outlet if José needed help. This was something that the team had practiced last week during the drills set up by his father.

  Seconds later, José did need that help. Two Volts players moved in, one from each side. They were pinching away any safe pass that José could make up the field.

  But this drew them out of position, no longer guarding other players.

  As if he was sitting in front of the television with his dad holding the remote and freezing the image, Cameron could picture the field like it was a chessboard. Up along the right side of the field, two Blazers—Drew Allen and Kyle Fenton—were wide open.

  Both were also quick players and great at ball handling. Get them the ball and the two of them would push their way into the attack zone and have a great scoring opportunity.

  It appeared to Cameron that José saw it too. Volts players were too close to him. But any pass in their direction would be almost certainly intercepted by the incoming Volts.

  Come on, Cameron thought. Do the right thing.

  All José needed to do was pass the ball back to Cameron, who would have the perfect angle to redirect the ball to Drew. In an instant, the trap set by the two Volts players would snap shut on nothing.

  “Here!” Cameron called out, though he felt that he should not have needed to say that. They had done this drill endlessly in practice to rehearse for exactly this situation.

  José dribbled forward a few more steps, then faked a pass up the field and tried to beat his closest opponent by going around him. If he managed to break loose, it would give the Blazers a great scoring opportunity.

  It might have worked, but José lost control of the ball. It was just enough for the Volts player to slide into the ball and kick it to his teammate.

  That gave them both a straight arrow down the field. Cameron was too far over to intercept them.

  He had no choice but to give chase as the other team moved closer toward the Blazers’ net.

  Thirty seconds later, the Volts had scored.

  Thirty seconds after that, José was standing on the sidelines, replaced by the substitute sent in by Cameron’s dad.

  CHAPTER 8

  COACH WHO?

  Forty minutes later, Cameron and his dad sat at a corner table in a coffee shop with José Padilla and his father. José’s father introduced himself as Michael. Michael had dark hair and was going bald. He was tall with a heavy build and wore glasses with a thick frame.

  Two untouched cups of coffee rested on the table in front of both men. Cameron and José were each working on two glasses of chocolate milk. José sat across from Cameron, but kept looking past his teammate, as if the opposite wall was interesting.

  Michael smiled and spoke to Cameron’s father. “Thanks for meeting,” he said. “You might think I wanted to talk about your choice to pull José from the game. But that’s not the reason I wanted to meet.”

  José chimed in. “I messed up. I deserved to be pulled from the game. Especially after all the drills we did for that exact situation. I’m sorry about that.”

  “You’re in charge when Coach Kelly isn’t here,” Michael added. “So we trust the reason for your decision, and we’ve learned the lesson.”

  “That part is never fun for a coach,” Cameron’s dad said. “When Cameron was younger, he’d hold on to the ball all the time. After they pulled him a few times, he finally began to play with discipline. It’s why his other team was so successful. It’s about winning. But it’s also about setting them up for the future. You know. Scholarships.”

  “I appreciate that. And I understand where you’re coming from.” Michael smiled again, and it was obvious he meant it. “Like I said, we’re not here to question your coaching decisions.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “Your coaching methods differ from what the kids have been taught by Coach Kelly. That’s not a bad thing. But to be fair to Coach Kelly we thought you should know more about her methods.”

  Michael paused for a moment and looked at his son. ”Here in this small town, we’re proud of her,” he said. “She was born and raised here, then returned after all she accomplished in soccer on a national level.”

  “On a national level?” Cameron’s dad looked surprised. “When we Googled her, we didn’t see that, right?” James turned to Cameron, who nodded in agreement.

  “There was nothing about that,” said Cameron.

  “She just got married about a month into the season,” José added.

  Cameron remembered Drew telling him that Coach Kelly helped her new husband on Saturday mornings.

  “She changed her last name to Harrison,” José continued. “If you want to learn about her background in the sport, you should Google ‘Kelly Matthews, women’s soccer.’”

  Cameron pulled his smartphone from his pocket and swiped at the screen. He entered the search terms. The results were immediate.

  “Dad,” Cameron said after scanning the links. “This is pretty good stuff.” Cameron handed his smartphone across to his Dad.

  “Olympic-level playing,” his Dad said, reading one of the headlines. “Top-ranked university player.”

  “It’s not her style to talk about it,” Michael said. “But she’s the real deal. What you won’t find on there are how many players from this small town she’s coached who have gone on to get scholarships at major universities. Again, she doesn’t talk about it, but most of us parents understand the reason she’s so successful with our kids. And given what you’ve been doing with the kids during practice, you might find her approach very interesting.”

  “I’m listening,” Cameron’s dad said. “I’m open to anything that will help the kids get better at the game.”

  “We’re headed out,” Michael said. “How about you do some more research on Coach Kelly? Much better to find out for yourself and decide whether she’s onto something.”

  CHAPTER 9

  A NEW APPROACH

  Cameron stood along the sideline at midfield. He held the ball above his head for a throw in. He couldn’t help but think of his last game with his other team, the Royal Blues. They had been up 3–2 toward the end of the game. The smart choice then was to keep possession of the ball and run down the clock.

  Now, however, the game was tied against the Bulls and their red jerseys. A goal would be huge either way. Take a chance for the win but risk losing?

  Kyle Fenton, fast as usual, was breaking for an opening upfield. Trying a throw to him was the riskier play.

  The safe throw was back down the field, to one of their own defensive players. But that would burn precious time off the clock, trying to advance the ball.

  “Go for it, Cam!” His dad’s voice came from the stands. “Have some fun.”

  What a difference watching the Coach Kelly videos had made for Cameron and his dad. For a while, Cameron had been planning on telling his dad that he had lost his love for the sport. It wasn’t fun always stressing about making the right decision or who was watching that might give him a scholarship.

  But the Coach Kelly videos they had watched together changed everything. Because she’d been an Olympic-level player, his dad had been open to learning from her approach.

  The weakness of a team-first work ethic is that it takes away enthusiasm and creativity and doesn’t give kids a chance to develop their natural talents. This was from the YouTube video of Coach Kelly Matthews explaining her philosophy. It had nearly a million views, and thousands of “thumbs-up” comments.

  At a certain age when they are developing, let’s not worry about winning. Let them enjoy some selfishness to get excited about what they can do with a ball. We can bring in teamwork and discipline later. But if they’ve lost their enthusiasm or don’t have skills, no amount of teamwork is going to help them get to a college level of play.

  After watching all the videos, his dad had agreed with Coach Kelly. Give full effort and don’t worry if you make a mistake. What you learn from your mistakes will make you a better player. It may also help get that college scholarship.

  Cameron flung the ball to where Kyle was breaking. It was a perfect throw. Kyle didn’t have to break stride as he reached the ball.

  Cameron didn’t just stand and watch, though. He sprinted for an open space just behind Kyle. He hoped the ball would come back to him for an opportunity to score.

  Still, if Kyle tried to hold on, no worries.

  Yes. Soccer was fun for Cameron again. His dad had even stopped taking videos of the games. Now the family watched movies at night instead of replaying and analyzing soccer games.

  With the crowd roaring, Cameron didn’t yell for the ball. It came to him anyway.

  He trapped it with his right foot. He knew he had about a second before a Bull forward was on him.

  Cameron pretended to mishandle the ball to give the attacking player confidence. It was something he’d perfected during scrimmages in practice, against his own players.

  It worked! The Bull player darted in close, hoping to strip him of the ball for a clear break down the field. Now the Bull player was badly out of position, with no way to turn back in time.

  Cameron flipped the ball past the redjersey player and caught up to it two steps later. The risk had paid off. Now they had a two-man advantage going toward the net.

  Cameron kept dribbling forward. Another opponent peeled off to intercept him.

  It was all Cameron needed.

  Two of his teammates were rushing for open positions upfield. Better yet, one of them was José Padilla, who was a great shooter.

  Time for a winning pass, Cameron thought. Not the safe, short pass. Not enough time in the game.

 

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