THE LAW OF THE HARVEST AND SOCCER

“I’m so confused,” commented Jean, a high school soccer player. “It seems like every coach I talk to tells me something different about the game. So, who do I believe?”
Our statement for Jean is, “Learn to figure out more and more about soccer on your own.” Please understand that we are not reducing the importance of your coach. What we are saying is to take more responsibility for figuring things out on your own. In accepting that responsibility, here is something you will notice. Most people talk about personal preferences rather than about facts or laws. Throughout your book we do our best to stimulate your thinking in terms of laws versus preferences. Here is one example.

From Coach Robertson
Fortunately for my days in sports, I grew up around farms and farming. I say that because it was on the farm where I learned The 1st Law of the Farm. Students….Have you ever crammed for a test in school only to forget most of what you learned the day after the test? Players…..Do you ever allow yourself to get out of shape during the off season, only to show up for the first day of practice trying to cram in getting into shape? What growing up around farmers in the Midwest taught me was that there are seasons and times for everything. Take for example bringing in the harvest. Harvesting a crop and getting the reward was great. Harvest time was part of the reward for all of the sweat and back breaking hard work. But I learned early in life that you couldn’t just do the harvest any more than a soccer players can just do reaching their potential. You can’t cram on the farm and you can’t cram in soccer. There is a time of the year when farmers have to work themselves silly just to get the fields ready for planting. Then they have to plant good seed and the right seed. They couldn’t plant pumpkin seeds and expect to harvest corn, nor can you plant bad seed and expect to harvest a good soccer crop. Then the real work begins! They have to weed the fields, keep the bugs out, water the new sprouts—they have to tend the crops. Sad to say, but I also learned that farmers weren’t always able to bring in the harvest they had planned on, or thought that all of their hard work deserved. I learned real fast that farmers couldn’t control the rain, the wind, the sun, the bugs—they could not control all of the elements that helped bring in the harvest, or destroy it. In like manner, you can’t control everything about competing in the soccer. There are too many factors outside of your control to focus simply on winning; the harvest. But when things do go right, when you have done your best, when you have given your all to those things that are under your control, and the harvest does come in, it’s a pretty exciting time!

Take a quick stretch break. Take 3 deep breaths. Stretch out for a minute. Now we are going to suggest how The Law of the Farm governs soccer just as surely as the law of gravity influences your movements, your arm swing, and ball flight.
• There is a time to prepare. When you miss the window of opportunity to prepare for the season, and before games, you diminish the harvest.
• You reap what you sow. Do not think you can practice without intensity and a lack of commitment then expect to play with the right intensity come match time. Bad habits produce other bad habits.
• Pay attention to the things you can control. Good farmers pay attention to the things under their control. The things they can control can never be at the mercy of the things they cannot control. Accomplished athletes pay attention to performance factors under their control, including the mind’s side of performance. They enjoy the moments of practice, rehearsal, competition, and the harvest.
• Learn from feedback. True competitors learn as much or more from what went wrong in practice as from what went right in their preparation and performance. Learning from feedback is your major method of improvement. Athletic intelligence includes learning from mistakes, reinforcing what you did right, and from continuously preparing, practicing, and performing at higher levels. Athletes who do not learn from their competitive experiences are destined, and doomed, to repeat the same errors and suffer the same fate time after time.
• Remember The Law of the Harvest.


“Laws are starting to make more sense to me,” said Kim (a HS Senior soccer). “It’s kind of like jumping off a 30 foot bluff into a lake. You can’t jump off the bluff, get half way down, change your mind, and stop falling. The Law of Gravity rules!”


LIFE SKILL
• Do you ever slack off on your homework, yet still expect to keep your grades up so that you can play soccer? It doesn’t work does it? The Law of the Harvest catches up with you.
• Think of rest, recovery, and adequate sleep as one of your “seeds” for playing and performing up to your potential in school and on the field. Do you ever cut your sleep short to party, stay out late, or talk too long on your cell phone, yet still plan on playing well in tomorrow’s big game or do well on your Biology Exam? It doesn’t work. You reap what you sow and The Law of the Harvest catches up with you.
• You got the point, but one more for good measure. You have the right passing technique, which is a great “seed” for success, but you don’t handle stress well. The same goes with your teachers and coaches. You make fairly good grades and listen in practice, but you don’t handle stress well. Putting in the extra time to develop the mental skills that help you control your stress on and off the soccer field are part of preparing for the harvest.

WORK TOWARD THE LAW OF THE HARVEST.