Saturday, March 19, 2011

In safe hands!

They say you need to possess a unique character to be a soccer goalkeeper.

For starters, you must love pressure, enjoy yelling at your team mates and be the owner of a very short memory.

And that comes from one of their own, Nick Karaffa, who has just been taken on by Southern Indiana United as a specialized coach for those between the posts.

“I do personally feel it takes a special person to want to play goal,” Karaffa told Kick It. “There’s a saying that you can’t do anything about the last goal or save, so just focus on the next one. You also have to be able to ‘see’ the game, understand what is going on, who needs to be where, how things are developing and what’s the best way to prevent a goal scoring opportunity.”

Karaffa, a four year starter with both New Albany High School and Transylvania University, said he began playing in goals as a youngster because no one else wanted to do it.

“It’s funny, you can ask a group of kids if anyone wants to hop in goal and the majority will give you a look of disinterest,” he said. “But there are always a few that want to try it and those are the ones I like working with.”

SIU recognized a need to concentrate more on improving its goalkeepers, so he was approached last summer by director of coaching Dutch Vigar and vice president select soccer, Debbie Webb.

“I had moved home to study for the bar exam and hadn't given coaching much thought at the time,” he said. “After talking with them, I thought it sounded like a good way to help some local kids learn about the most important position on the field. I think through their experience, they knew that unless a goalkeeper is getting special work, a normal practice won’t be as beneficial for them as it is the field players.”

The 1983 Indiana ODP team member said you can equate a goalkeeper to a pitcher in baseball.

“Taking infield practice won’t do them much good, so they have special coaches that can design training for them to work on position specific drills,” he said. “That's what SIU realized and brought me in to help with that specialized training.”

Karaffa starts with the basics, like catching and positioning. When a decent foundation is in place, he tries to build the more challenging aspects like diving, handling crosses and organizing the defense.

“We use a lot of repetition in drills for muscle memory purposes,” he said. “It prevents injury and makes the kids get comfortable with what they’re doing so when they need to react in a game, they won’t have to think and instead react naturally with the proper form.”

So if you see some increasingly good saves on the fields of southern Indiana this spring, mixed with the odd constructive yell or two, don’t be too surprised.

Warm neck snoods get the cold shoulder -- and watch out for vanishing spray

Speaking of referees and the Laws of the Game, players like Carlos Tevez and Samir Nasri are going to have to find another way to keep their necks warm following a decision to ban snoods from July 1.

A growing number of players have been sporting the latest fashion accessory but the International Football Association Board believes they pose a safety risk if they are grabbed when are running at speed.


Carlos Tevez wll have to find another way to keep his neck snug


The thick neck-warmers became increasingly popular during Britain’s cold winter but had already been outlawed by Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
IFAB has also sanctioned the continuation of an experiment using “vanishing spray” in South America.

The spray is used to mark out the 10 yards the defensive wall should be from the ball at free kicks. The referee paces out the distance and marks a white line with the spray, which the wall can’t step over. The line then disappears within a minute.
It was invented sports journalist Pablo Silva, who felt hard done by when a referee allowed encroachment on a free kick he was taking at the end of an amateur game in Argentina.

FIFA has also decided to introduce five match officials for each game at the Euro 2012 finals in Poland and Ukraine next year. The two extra officials will be behind the goal-line but on the side of the goal next to the assistant referee.

There will also be another year of testing to find a successful goal-line technology system, despite 10 such systems failing tests recently.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter admitted that England’s disallowed goal, struck by Frank Lampard, in last year's World Cup against Germany was "an immense error" and said he would welcome the use of goal-line technology at the 2014 tournament in Brazil if a suitable system can be found.

Presidential trip for local teams!

With the spring soccer select season about to kick off, we take a look a new state competition which will feature two local teams in its inaugural year.



In recent years, the Indiana State Cup has been the premier tournament for select soccer clubs, while the Challenge Cup has catered for second tier squads.

Now comes the addition of the Indiana Presidents Cup, a middle tier competition between the State and Challenge Cups, which is expected to result in better parity at all three levels of play.

The tournament will feature boys’ and girls’ teams from U11 to U17, with champions from U14-U17 getting the chance to represent Indiana at regional and possibly national level.

Two of the area’s squads – Southern Indiana United’s U14 Strikers and U16 Net-Surfers – will take a trip to the inaugural Indiana Presidents Cup competition, with the preliminary round taking place in Evansville and Fort Wayne from May 13-15. The finals weekend will be held from June 3-5.


Strikers prepared

SIU Strikers have been invited to play in the competition thanks to their success last year when they made it to the semi-finals of the Challenge Cup.

“We were originally going to do the Challenge Cup again with hopes of winning, but once we got the invite, it was hard to say no,” said Strikers’ coach Paul Duckworth. “IYSA decided to cut the State Cup participants a little, and didn't want to overwhelm the Challenge Cup, so they created a second tier tournament, the Presidents Cup.”

There are 10 teams divided into four brackets, and Strikers find themselves in a grouping with Zionsville and Westfield Select.

“It is more of a sterner test for us than the Challenge Cup for sure, but not the stretch that it would have been participating in the State Cup,” said Duckworth.

He added that the team has been very active over the winter months, training twice a week, with one session working on speed and agility, and the other on technical skills.

“On the weekends, we participated in the Louisville Futsal League, and won both the league and the tournament for our age division,” said Duckworth. “The fast pace and quick feet needed to play futsal should serve us well this spring.”

Strikers are hoping to win their ISL division and gain promotion, while it has just kicked off its campaign in the Kentucky Select Soccer League (Div 1).

“We are looking forward to taking the next step up,” said Duckworth. “The Presidents Cup at the end of the season will be a healthy test of how far we have progressed this last year.”


Net-Surfers U16s

Net-Surfers’ U16 team, meanwhile, achieved some success last year, including the capturing of the Queen City Tournament in Cincinnati.

In the Presidents Cup, it has been drawn in a group with Fort Wayne, Jr. Irish and Indiana Invaders Blue.

The girls will this year be coached by Lindsey Wilkerson and will play in the Kentucky Select Soccer League Gold Division.

“This team has lots of potential with good talent,” says assistant coach Walter Iglesias. “Most of the girls have played together for years and know each other well. This should make for a good opportunity to do well in the Presidents Cup. There will be lots of good competition and I believe in the spirit of these girls determination to win.”

The Presidents Cup winners will represent Indiana at the Region II Midwest championships, and this year it is being held in South Bend, Indiana in June, while the national championships will take place in Des Moines, Iowa in July.

This is the fourth year of the US Youth Soccer Presidents Cup competition on a national level, but Indiana Soccer previously selected ISL Premier Division leaders who hadn’t advanced to the Indiana State Cup finals.

Indiana Soccer’s Director of Competition, Angel Hall, said she expects that by adding the Presidents Cup format, the Challenge Cup event –- which will feature some of the area’s teams -- will become more attractive. It is open to travel and recreational plus teams, but Midwest Regional League and ISL Premier teams are not eligible for it.

“The previous State and Challenge Cup results reflect that over 21 per cent of the preliminary round games are played to a goal differential of five or more,” she said.

The introduction of the Presidents Cup will also necessitate changes to the current State Cup format, which will be limited to 12 teams instead of the previous 16 team per age division format. The Challenge Cup will not have a limit to the number of teams accepted.