The Past Is Passed

"You can try to forget it or learn to live with it." - Patrick Jane, The Mentalist

Everyone has a past. Embrace it without being stuck as in quicksand. 

Anson Dorrance has his UNC Women's Soccer team read The Leadership Moment. In the introduction he asks four questions:

• What went well?
• What went poorly?
• What can we do better next time? 
• What is the enduring lesson? 

What lessons derive from the 2023 season?

1. Embrace change. 

Sadie Jaggers, like Gia Vlajkovic before her, changed positions and became dominant at the new position. Every year teams need to replace graduating seniors and find kills, blocks, assists, and player leadership. 

2. Do more and less. 

The teams at the "top of the table" have high ratios of aces to service errors. The best teams "win more points" and give away fewer. As a player, if you don't have a dominant serve, be efficient with limiting service errors. A serve doesn't have to be hard to be effective. Gigi Albuja has an aggressive float serve that isn't high velocity. 

3. Don't give away your power. 

You can only be as good as your self-belief. If you don't believe you can compete against top teams, then you won't. In the animal kingdom, the non-dominant individuals submit to the dominant in a variety of ways. Never go there. 

Lagniappe. Starting out?