ARE SCORERS BORN OR MADE? by Will Byrne
For many field hockey players, the nuts and bolts of the sport come easily. They can trap, pass, dribble, and tackle. However, when faced with a rare scoring opportunity in the offensive circle, they panic, the weight of the stick feeling more like a live fish than a tool designed to put a ball in a cage.
There are a lucky few who seemingly have no fear of this moment – who feel no momentary lapse in confidence. Their body moves fluidly, and, with decisive force, they've seized the opportunity to put their team on the scoreboard.
We remember these goals: the build-up, the theatrics, the way we hold our breath, the way the back-board cracks with approval. We remember goals more specifically than other pieces of the game. We remember them, because when it comes down to it, the game is about goals. The game is about scoring.
What makes a scorer? Sometimes their ability seems so innate that it feels they must be born that way. Something in their genetics must give them that knack, it's so rare. However, delve into the world of scorers and their psychology, and we find something very different. We find men and women who have honed their craft over years of solitary sweat. We find scorers, inching closer to the lonely edge of perfection.
The scorers' journey begins and ends with fundamentals. "Three to five thousand reps," says Terry Walsh, USA Field Hockey's Technical Director, former Australian Olympic player and head coach of the Netherlands and Australian men's squads. “Three to five thousand reps before you build muscle memory equipped to improvise. If you're practicing thirty or forty times a week, that's a lot of weeks." This concentrated repetition of a funda- mental skill, such as driving the ball with accuracy, or executing
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a reverse stick chip, is necessary to be able to complete the action under the game-time stressors of time and defensive pressure. Without practice, you might as well shop for your next stick at the fish market.
Primary in importance to all these scoring skills is balance, says Walsh. "Having your center of gravity in the best possible position to execute a shot is what you have to visualize to the best effect." He compares a striker's ability to contort their wrists and hips to find the perfect stroke to the release of National Basketball Association Finals MvP Dirk Nowitzki's jump shot. The German corkscrews and jerks his body, reacting to the defense till the instant he releases the ball. His wrist and elbow remember perfectly how to find the space inside the rim; his body remembers roughly the balance needed to achieve this maneuver.
"He's done so much practice that improvising in that split second is completely natural," says Walsh. "Creativity can only come from an incredible handle on the basic skills."
University of Denver Sports Psychologist Mark Aoyagi agrees with this importance of practice over physical gifts: "Power, speed and force tend to be important factors in judging talent, but work ethic is an attribute you're able to control that is ultimately more important than physical gifts: gifts that will eventually hit a wall as the competition gets better." More than a genetic blessing of a scoring gene, scorers are blessed with the dedication and desire to obsessively practice these skills at their fundamental level.
The more a player practices the basic skills of scoring, the more their instincts translate into confident actions on the pitch.
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