Claudia achieved the Coaching F License at 20 and has since coached with Berkshire Soccer Academy in Massachusetts and had experience working with Team First (made up of several of the 1999 USA women’s World Cup winning team). She continues to play for Columbia International University in South Carolina as well as being the Varsity Girls Assistant and a Head Soccer Coach at Ridgeview High School. Claudia is passionate about training other girls to become better athletes on and off the field, like so many coaches did for her.
Our soccer team started spring season a few weeks ago. For us this will consist of lifting, conditioning, and playing soccer for our upcoming fall season. Our goal is to become stronger individually and as a team. We want to be able to have a higher level of endurance and strength for our practices and games.
With spring season sometimes comes discouragement and complaints. “Why are we doing this or why don’t we do this” type of questions. Sometimes we are tired or not in the mood for a workout. The other side is the understanding of if we don’t do these workouts or work hard we won’t be ready for fall season and we won’t be able to up our competition level. Results don’t happen in one day, it takes hard work and dedication. It takes patience and understanding of what and why you are completing a workout.
Our strength coach in the simplest way to say it “Knows her stuff.” She knows exactly how to start us off with lifting; from the proper forms to the most effective exercises. She also has a lot of knowledge in the game of soccer and the experience to boot. The way she started our lifting off was with PVC pipes. We used these to help us develop the proper form before we would start lifting with weighted bars.
What she was teaching us was patience. Not just in lifting and conditioning or even in soccer, but in everything we do. With lifting if we don’t have patience and get the proper form down we could get injured. In soccer we need patience in how we play, we can’t rush our play because that will result in not playing our game. We need this patience in order to trust our coaches and what they are telling us and in knowing that our teams will be able to work together. Patience plays into our relationships and the stronger those are the stronger our teams will be.
The lesson our strength coach taught us applies outside of our sport. That’s the point, coaches have another role than just training the team at practice. The hope is to leave an impact on their players that they can use in life off the field, court, track, pool… As female coaches if we are hoping to impact other female athletes to be coaches or really anything influential in their life, this is how we can be an influence in their life right now, through the simplest of messages. As a team we get to learn these lessons and grow together. Because our coaches have put the time in to make sure we learn these things they have influenced us and in turn we can do the same.
