Which is the point Hempen understands best of all. When the situation gets dicey, who will the team turn to? Suggestions start to manifest at practice, but practice isn’t crunch time.
A season ago, the team turned to Lordemann. But as Hempen noted, she was a really good soccer player for three years, but very special for one. That doesn’t happen in the course of 16 months of practice. It occurs over years of practice and playing in tight situations.
“You have soccer players and kids who play soccer. It’s the kids who are soccer players are the ones you’re relying on to take that step forward in their development, not necessarily as a leader, but the go-to,” he said. (Assistant coach) Tori Ball and I were talking the other day, there’s always been that moment in my coaching career that you have that player and you basically tell the team – and the team agrees with you – when it goes to hell, find her. That was KK for us. When it all goes to hell, find those players and they’ll help you, they’ll guide you. That’s what we’re trying to develop.
“Now, how do I go about that? I have my thoughts on our players, and you nudge them a little it to see if they bite. If they start to believe and they start to bite, it has to be the right person, with all the intangibles. Maybe not the best player, but the right player.”
The process sounds easy. Then you factor in the schedule. It is half the length this season – just 10 matches – and all of them are in Mountain West play. They count from the opening kick.
There were no exhibitions to test game speed versus practice speed, and definitely no non-conference matches to play with the lineup and see what starts to transpire.
It all counts, right away.
“Since we had half of our season taken away, preseason is a huge opportunity for us to not just find out who the personalities are going to be, but honestly gaining some confidence as a team individually,” senior Taylor Steinke said. “In practice, you can only get so much done, and you’re only used to playing at the speed your team is at. A lot of times in your first game, you get the luxury of it being an exhibition game. With that taken out of the picture, it does bring some nerves for our first game. We don’t know what the groove is going to be like yet, and we don’t know where other teams are. We haven’t played a game in more than year, but neither have they.
“It’s kind of a dynamic we’re going to have to figure out on the fly. I do think we’ve gotten some good training in, we do have a lot of potential and I’m excited to see what the team will do.”
That’s the scary part. It’s also fun, Steinke said. The Rams are coming off their best season ever, but it seems like forever ago it took place. So much has changed, with the world and with them, it’s difficult to navigate it all.
But navigate they will. This is exciting. This is the moment they’ve been waiting for, but it comes with nerves and anxiousness and a bit of the unknown.
Bring it on and go after it, but it will feel a bit like walking a tightrope. The Rams have to find out who they are, and in a short time, but none of them can pressure themselves or another into assuming a role of any kind.
“I think there is a huge sense of urgency. I think there’s a huge sense of nerves; I think the nerves will play a pretty big part in this, just because if we don’t have the practice that we’re talking about with preseason games, then it gets tricky to kind of figure out the balance between patience and forcing something,” Steinke said. “There’s a massive sense of urgency, and that’s never a good thing. The prettiest parts of soccer aren’t forced, they’re natural.”
It has to be in matches, now they are finally here, where they’ll have to find and follow the team’s compass.
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March 04, 2021 at 02:09AM
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Rams Have a Short Time to Find Their Identity - CSURams.com
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