Talking trash, looking silly and competing with coaches Thursday, October 8, 2020
The fun of OSU soccer practice
Ben Hutchens For Hannah Webb and Olyvia Dowell, the regular grind of soccer practice can quickly turn into a competitive trash-talking filled game. Oklahoma State women’s soccer practices are not all wind sprints and fundamental drills. Occasionally, coach Colin Carmichael will have his team play two minigames that his players love. “My favorite (thing to do in practice) would have to be staff vs players PKs,” Webb said. This activity is Claire Boomer pretty straightforward, pitting coaches, strength trainers and OSU athletics employees against players in a penalty shootout contest. “We’ll throw in people who didn’t even play soccer like Mal (Mallory Fowlkes), our strength and conditioning coach or Todd (Todd Gerlt, Cowgirl Soccer’s Associate Director of Athletic Claire Boomer Training),so it’s just funny to see them Photos from the OSU vs. West Virginia women's soccer game on September 25, take a PK because 2020 at Neal Patterson Stadium in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Claire Boomer
they weren’t soccer people,” Webb said. Webb can’t remember if any of those non-soccer staff members have ever scored, which is reasonable since she joked that for some of them “it’s clearly been a couple of years.” One person who doesn’t let his team down in staff vs. players penalty kicks is Carmichael. “He takes pretty good PKs I’ll give it to him,” Webb admitted with a smile. Carmichael said that normally the Cowgirls play the penalty shootout game later in the year as they prepare for postseason play because they could potentially have a shootout to advance in the Big 12 or NCAA tournament. But since there is no postseason this fall, he said they may have to bring back the game during conference play. The fun does not stop at staff vs players penalty kicks. Carmichael also brought up a practice activity he calls “power and finesse.” “In power and finesse, basically each offensive player gets a long shot and then a short shot
right after each other,” Carmichael explained. “If you go 0-2, you’re out, if you go 1-2, you stay in the game and if you go 2-2, you get to challenge somebody on the other team, and they have to make 2-2 to stay in the game. You have two teams going against each other, it’s kind of quick-fire and it’s a lot of fun, especially when you get down to those last couple players. “(My favorite practice game) is probably power and finesse, just because I like shooting,” Dowell said. Power and finesse has a little bit of a different feel than staff vs players penalty shootout does. Everybody is on their own, so players’ highlights and lowlights are magnified. “The coaches will tend to give us some awkward balls to hit from a distance,” Dowell said. “So sometimes you just completely duff it and look like an idiot, and sometimes you completely hammer it into the back of the net, and everybody goes crazy.” See Lookin silly on page 4