Go Sports Life

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with one of the top coaches in the area Gavin Pugh. What I thought would be a 15-30 minute interview turned into a great conversation that lasted over an hour, spanning many different topics.

Gavin is the Director of Dragon Soccer and currently coaches the Wings U18 Boys Premier team, the U16 Champlin Park Boys Premier team, and the Mounds View Boys High School team that made it to the State Final last fall.

This is Part One of Two Parts of my interview with Gavin.

AK: How did Dragon Soccer get started and when did you decide to come over to the US to start your own company?

GP : I came over here to study at Illinois State University and I had been working with the Football Association. When I came over it was to study but I heard about a couple of teams that wanted a coach to work with in Illinois . After I finished, I looked at the opportunities here in the US versus going back and taking a job full time with the FA. I was invited to down to work with the Tampa Bay Mutiny, an MLS team at the time, but shortly after I returned home to work full-time with the Welsh FA due to my visa expiring. Working at the FA is very enjoyable, but the market is tied up with ex-professionals. Clubs really don’t look for new or innovative ideas in the U.K. They aren’t looking for new people to come in and change things around. They typically stick with ex-pros. At this time I had my Masters degree in Coaching Science. I had been working with a few semi-pro teams also with their tactical understanding as well as becoming an SAQ International trainer (speed, agility and quickness). I was working as an Academy Coach at two clubs, and I went to a few more clubs and offered my SAQ services for free for the pro/reserve teams, and I realized very quickly they weren’t interested in a 22 year old with two degrees and a UEFA B license. They want the ex-pros who retired early through injury and they will pay him to remain loyal to the club.

The following two summers I traveled back to the US to work with Coerver Coaching, I enjoy the summers and lifestyle over here, it is so different, and decided I would stay and start my own company. I wanted to figure out what soccer was like here; was it growing? Was it a viable business? I found out that it was so I stayed.

AK: You got all your licenses (“A” and “Premier”) when you were young and you saw the benefit of going to the courses, is that why you only hire licensed coaches for Dragon Soccer?

GP : Just because you have a license it doesn’t mean you are a wonderful coach, but it certainly shows that you are dedicated to the game and you are able to tweak your sessions to a higher level. You are able to modify more of the things that you do to find success on the pitch. You can look at your team’s patterns of play, both positive and negative, and hopefully you have the knowledge from the courses to adjust. I really want to reward the coaches who have the initiative to go out and try to improve as a coach. I want those coaches on my staff.

AK: Do coaching licenses mean anything to people?

GP: No, not really. When I came to Minnesota 5 or 6 years ago there were very few people in the state with licenses that I was aware of. Back home if you have licenses you can get a solid job in a Center of Excellence , or as an Academy Coach working with youth players, but there are no progressions up the ladder. If you are fine with that, it is a role that you can do financially well with and you are working with the next generation of stars, but if you have that desire or initiative to coach at the higher level, the national level, it is very difficult to break out of that role as a young coach. It takes 15-20 years of coaching before you can move up.

AK: How do you think the USSF and NSCAA are doing in their role of coaching education here in the US ?

GP : I enjoy the courses and they are making good progress. My main point would be that I wish they were more consistent with their messages. When I took my “B” license they had so many different types of coaches there. They had the Argentinean U19 National staff coach, a British National Coach and some American coaches. With all these different coaches we were really getting a bunch of different mixed messages. That can be a positive seeing all these different coaching styles, philosophies, methodologies, but there was no real clear cut message of “this is how you will coach to deliver our US developmental model.” There is no national identity being born there. I was looking at all these coaches and figuring out what I liked and what I didn’t like about their sessions, and it was up to me to interpret what I do with the info.

What was confusing was, if you had Juan Carlos, the Argentinean National Coach, you had to do “shadow play” in your final session. He made it very clear that if you didn’t do shadow play you would fail your “B” License. If you were assessed with Jay Entlich, (former U21 US Coach) he would absolutely demand a small sided game that always emphasizes interaction between your fullbacks and outside mids (meaning he expected me to play 4-4-2 or 4-5-1 all of the time, with all of my teams!). So there was no clear methodology of “this is what your session will look like, this is the desired training effect that you are going to produce for our country.”

I had a chance to talk with Jeff Tipping. He’s a really interesting guy. Something we discussed was using the NSCAA as a Coaching Institute. The NSCAA would become only a Coaching Education Body. No testing. No accreditation. One of the questions they asked at the Premier course that they asked us was, “Should we be giving you anything [award, certificate, etc] for taking this course?” I don’t think they have really formulated a model for what they are trying to do and how it fits into the big picture. Something that Jeff and I discussed was potentially using the NSCAA as a Coaching Institute which would really be infiltrated deeply into every state.

How it would work:

If you wanted to join the Institute you would start out as a “Level One” or “Year One Coach.” You would be given a certain amount of information. If we decide to go on to Level Two there would be new information that would build on Level One. Ultimately, seven years on we would be “Level Seven” Coaches. We would be given far more advanced information about tactical awareness. There would be written and oral exams for each level.

Now if we wanted to take the step to become accredited coaches we would go to the USSF for a 7-9 day course where they would be able to test us for that time. Right now, you go to the course, they give you the material, you perform one or two 15-30 minute sessions and they tell you if you’re good enough get your license. In this 7-9 day course they would be able to asses you 5-7 times. Now they are not assessing you on what information they are giving you that week, they are relying on your State’s NSCAA to give you the information, but they are assessing you as a coach, what you know and how you present it to your players.

AK: Would this be possible?

GP : It is still in the early office stages, just ideas, but both the NSCAA and USSF would be working together. It can work because the NSCAA wants to be the Educating body here in the US and the USSF wants to be the Licensing Body of the US . The first thing is how do they pull USSF accreditation out of each state? Then how do they get more NSCAA instructors into the states? Right now they have one coach covering 9 or more states for the NSCAA and that is an impossible task. With additional staff in the area it can work, I have just been given the nod to instruct NSCAA courses in this state also. It will take a lot of work sharing, job sharing from all of us involved in both organizations, but hopefully we can succeed.

AK: At the NSCAA Advanced Course this winter I was fortunate to hear Bill Beswick speak. He talked about players at different levels being on a balance beam.

At the Junior level in sports you’re asking players to walk a balance beam that is 4 ft off the floor. Now, young players will look at. See the challenge. Think about their resources. Think about the consequences of doing it or not doing it. And most of them will say "I can do this." And they'll get up on the balance beam and they'll walk, jump off it and feel good.

Then the same player goes to the regional tryouts and the balance beam is 6 ft. So the player looks at the balance beam. Thinks about their recourses. Preparation, training and confidence and says "Ok I can do this." Even though there is a risk of failure now in the eyes of others. And so they walk the balance beam, but some don't. Some don't even attempt it. Some others fall off.

Then we move on. To the England national team. And the balance beam is at 20 ft. 20 ft high. So they will look at the balance beam and then they have that tremendous courage, which you identify and love in all top players, to cross the white line and they do it. They get on the balance beam where their technique is tested to the full. And there is an enormous risk involved. Enormous consequences. Failure is seen nationally and internationally. England 's greatest sports moment of the year featured their goalkeeper kicking over a back pass and letting it go into the goal. There is no escape for an England player from the abuse and ridicule. But these players still do it. Why? Because they've got tremendous courage and because they've got attitude to challenge.

How do you get players to remain confident and continue to move up the ladder as the pressure increases?

GP : I thought it was a wonderful presentation by Bill. It is a really good analogy for dealing with expectations. How you can ask, from a coaching perspective, the players to step up on their own. They are given accountability, responsibility and leadership. There are different ways to get it out of players. At the national level the biggest obstacle is the media and how you can overcome that.

What I expect of my players in regards to the “balance beam”?

First a coach has to gain, earn and keep the respect of the players. The way that I gain and keep that respect is through 1-on-1 interaction. Being trustworthy, reliable and being as transparent as possible. Every player should know what you are thinking about them all of the time. I do a truth window with my players. What they know and what I know. What they know and I don’t know, and we work together on a consistent model of this. Be as honest as possible. I don’t hide my feelings from players. I let them know when I’m happy with them and when I’m unhappy with them. But I don’t simply tell them I’m unhappy with them, I’ll explain from a soccer perspective what they are not providing to the team on that day, during that week, or even season long. I think more importantly, to be consistent. If you’re consistent you’ll gain their respect. The transparency again, they’ll know where they stand. If you are consistent they will expect a consistency from themselves. Then you provide the excellence.

Technical excellence. They expect that of themselves.

Tactical information and knowledge. Getting players to not only understand it, but how and when to apply it. It’s one thing to ask your players to do an overlap in the game, but it is a whole different level to ask them when they should do it? For example, teaching your team what should the movement of an opponent’s back 4 look like to ensure an overlap is effective be? Can they recognize the correct moment to do the overlap? It really involves taking the tactical knowledge from a coach into a formal presentation to the players (I enjoy using Power Point presentations with my players) finally through to the actual application in the game.

So; respect, technical excellence, tactical knowledge and application of this tactical information. It is the expectation of always asking more and more of your players. Some players you can ask them all the time for more. Sometimes you’ll have players that reach a point where you simply cannot ask them for more. You have to put your arm around their shoulder and say, “This week has been a good week. Good job.” It is about knowing when to stretch your players.

The fifth thing is accountability. Holding players accountable for their actions on the field. Holding players accountable for their fitness level. Holding players accountable for their communication and relationships with their teammates. Holding players accountable for their technical skills and tactical knowledge.

What I feel I really do a nice job of with my teams, is getting my players to hold each other accountable. I see my role as simply coaching the players on how to coach themselves. If I can sit back during a game and watch my team win 3-0, and they coach themselves, I feel I’ve done my job because they are doing the coaching. They understand my thoughts and I’ve delivered them cleanly.

AK: That is the way I feel. I want my teams to perform the same way as when I am there as when I am not there.

GP : Exactly. I totally agree.

AK: Recently read an article in the New York Times, Building Super Athletes- Russia's Spartak Tennis Club, that talked about how kids become “Super Athletes.” The author of the article found these conclusions. What do you think of his findings and what factors do you attribute to making “Super Athletes?”

1. Driven Parents. The hunger and ambition of Russian parents is uniquely strong, particularly when one considers how hard life is in Russia right now and also that the patron saint of Russian tennis parents is the ex-Siberian oil-field worker Yuri Sharapov, who came to America with less than $1,000 and his 7-year-old daughter, Maria, who now earns an estimated $30 million a year in endorsements. On the other hand, while they are intense, Russian parents aren't all that different a group from the parents in Serbia , the Czech Republic or Mission Viejo , Calif.

2. Early Starts. The kids here start young and specialize early. They are tennis players, and not much else competes for their attention (only a handful owned video games, according to my informal poll), and they also benefit from a Russian culture that's built to select athletes and shield them from academic pressures. Incidentally, there were indeed elite athletic genes floating around at Spartak: Alexandra's parents were famous figure skaters, and another kid was Myskina's cousin. So good genes probably play a role, or (just as likely, to my mind) there's a beneficial effect to growing up in an environment of working athletes.

3. Powerful, Consistent Coaches. Most tennis coaches I saw were treated with a respect reserved for university professors. The tennis clubs I visited were patrolled by a squad of Brezhnev lookalikes who offered advice that seemed hewed from stone. Their institutional specialty is biomechanics, but the point is perhaps not so much in the details of that coaching, but rather in the passion, rigor and uniformity with which that coaching is delivered. This, incidentally, is the opposite of the entrepreneurial system in which many American tennis coaches operate, as they often compete with one another, relying on their ability to sell their services to sometimes anxious parents. American coaches have to be unique to survive; Russian coaches are mostly the same.

4. Cultural Toughness. As poets have pointed out, the intrinsic hardiness of the Russian woman is legendary. Historically, this might have something to do with the hardships of life under Communism and the loss of 11 million soldiers in World War II. Whatever the cause, the immediate effect is a tangible mental toughness and a work ethic second to none. After all, at Spartak, they don't speak of "playing" tennis. The verb they like to use is borot'sya — to struggle.

If I gave in to the uncontrollable Ericssonian urge to put Spartak's success into a formula, it would read something like:

Intense Parents + Young Kids + Rigorous Technique + Toughness = Talent

Alongside it, we could write another equation:

Deliberate Practice + Time = Myelin = Talent

But in the end, as I look around the court, it can't come down to a formula because formulas are rational, and whatever Spartak is, it isn't entirely rational. It's a bunch of kids in a dumpy club who are burning to be here, for whom every swing is meaningful, who wake up in the morning and say, "Today is my day with Larisa Dmitrievna!" It's deeply and purposefully irrational, because it's built on a love of sport and country that can't be explained but holds everything together anyway. Spartak is not science; what happens here is not analogous to what happens in a factory or a laboratory. It's closer to what happens in a garden, a forgotten, rundown garden that somehow produces marvelous tomatoes, summer after summer. ⁷

GP : The article was really interesting and I wanted to highlight a couple of words that we can really apply to our youth soccer model over here. The key phrases that I identified as very, very important were:

-Early starts

-Specialize

-Only a handful of owned video games

-Powerful and consistent coaches

-A love the sport

If we are talking about American Youth Soccer we need to ask:

Do we start them early enough? There are coaches around the State that work with 3 and 4 year olds and that’s wonderful. They are getting them used to touching the ball, encouraging flexibility, mobility, and coordination.

Are we specializing early enough? This is a difficult one because, in Britain , soccer is by far the only sport. A large portion of kids do cross train and play basketball, rugby or cricket. But those sports are completely secondary to soccer, if there’s any conflict, soccer always wins! Over here though, you’ve got all these other sports and they are all competing for attention. So the question becomes should we take the philosophy that we profile the kids at the age of 8 years old and say “this is your sport, focus on it.” There is something to be said for specializing. There are some good programs like Bangu that provide some really positive thoughts towards that model. If you want to excel, play collegiality or even nationally, then you do need to be serious about specializing. There are only a couple of clubs in the entire country that truly do that from a young age. The midwest needs more clubs that specialize and say “we are here 100% for soccer.”

Having only a handful of video games. This revolves around the financial situation (as the Russians in the above example didn’t have money) and it certainly helps the kids focus. They develop a love for sports quickly. The more they play, the more they want to play. With so many distractions here in America that it doesn’t allow players to develop and specialize a love for one sport. You certainly do produce very good multi-sport athletes, but you could better produce single-sport athletes.

The powerful and consistent coaching. It was interesting that the article said that American coaches have to be unique to survive, but that Russian coaches are all generally the same. That is exactly true. I always get people asking me, “How are you different? How is Dragon Soccer different?” From a structural point of view Dragon Soccer isn’t any different. But we try to identify the best coaches locally and internationally and bring them over here to work for us. But in terms of what we are doing on the field it is no different. The curriculum is very much the same. The coaching points are the same. It is just about delivering it with more experience. My staff are able to recognizing the timing of the coaching points and how to consistently build up the progressions of the sessions. That is what makes coaching fun, and ultimately an art.

If we take a look at how the coaching structure should be set up, coaches should be the same. The coaching points should be the same. Activities should be the same. So the question becomes, do we have enough powerful, consistent coaches in the Midwest ? Probably not. Do we have enough in America ? Probably not. It is such a large country and we are trying to stretch these powerful, national coaches in different regions all the time and they don’t get to work as much as they should with some of the top players, or even have the time to identify the top players.

The last thing is the love of the sport. Are we allowing or enabling America ’s youth to love our sport? I think it is fantastic that now we have got Wheaties advertisements and Power Bar advertisements and somewhere there is a soccer ball in the advert. We’ve all seen the soccer mom adverts where the kids jump into the back of the Dodge Caravan and get thrown a juice-box or something similar. That proves to us that soccer is a growing, and marketable sport…

Part Two Is Coming Tomorrow