A quiet team is a losing team
What I saw at Shooting Star (and why silence is killing your recruiting opportunities)
Last Tuesday, I told you having a presence matters more than your highlight reel.
This weekend at Shooting Star, I watched 50+ games to see who actually did it.
The result? Most players stayed completely silent while their coaches screamed from the sideline.
And the pattern was impossible to miss: The worse the team, the louder the coach and the quieter the players.
Here’s what I learned about presence, communication, and why silence is killing recruiting opportunities.
The silence was deafening
Friday morning, first game.
I’m watching a central midfielder I’d pre-assigned from her email. Solid technical player. Good positioning. Making decent reads defensively.
But completely silent.
No “Step left!” to organize her forwards in the press. No “Ball, now!” when she was open in the pocket. No “I’ve got number 22" when she went to mark in the circle.
Just... nothing.
The net impact was that the game totally passed her by. Her team never looked to play to her in the middle, so everything happened around her.
And it wasn’t just her. It was most of the field. Both teams playing in near silence except for coaches yelling instructions from the sideline.
By Sunday afternoon, after watching dozens of games, this became the clearest pattern of the weekend:
When things went badly, coaches got louder and players got quieter.
Teams that were losing played in silence. Teams that were winning had more consistent player-to-player communication.
It reminded me of a line from Nick Nurse’s autobiography. Nurse is an NBA championship-winning coach with the Toronto Raptors, and he says simply: “A quiet team is in almost all cases a losing team.”
I saw that play out over and over this weekend.
Why players stay quiet (and why it doesn’t work in college)
I think there are three reasons most players don’t communicate:
1. They’re looking to the coach for all guidance
If your club coach constantly yells instructions, you learn to wait for direction rather than problem-solve yourself.
But in college, everything happens faster. Coaches can’t play the game for you.
We need players who will organize themselves and their teammates. Players who will call for the ball in the right moments. Player who will communicate threats and opportunities that the coach can’t see from the sideline.
If you’re silent at a showcase, I have to assume you’ll be silent in college when we need you to lead.
2. They’re afraid of saying the wrong thing
What if you tell a teammate to leave their mark and step to ball in a numbers down situation, and the opponent passes to a newly-open player, who scores? Isn’t that your fault?
Not necessarily; if you hadn’t sent pressure to ball, they might have scored anyway. And if it was the wrong choice, at least you made one; your coach can help you tweak that in future.
Communication isn’t about being perfect. It’s about giving your team the information to make better decisions.
The alternative - staying silent and hoping everyone guesses right - is worse in the long run.
Decisiveness breeeds decisiveness, and the opposite is also true.
3. They’re afraid of responsibility
Speaking up means taking ownership. And ownership means potential blame when things go wrong.
But here’s what college coaches are specifically looking for: Players who will take ownership. Who will organize. Who will speak up even when it’s uncomfortable.
Silence feels safe. But it’s invisible.
When players did have presence, they were impossible to miss
Here’s what fascinated me: Presence overrode technical ability in my evaluations more than I expected.
I showed up to watch an outside midfielder on one team. Solid player, decent technical skills, nothing spectacular.
But the central midfielder on the other team kept catching my eye.
She was constantly talking.
“I’m on!” when she was open.
“Drop!” when she needed defensive help from her forwards.
“Switch it!” when the play needed to go to the other side.
More importantly, she was constantly working. Sprinting to get ahead on counter-attacks. Sprinting back to the middle of the field when possession was lost. Creating passing angles and options even when she wasn’t going to get the ball.
By the end of the game, I had multiple notes on her and barely anything on the player I had come to see. There wasn’t much between them ability-wise, but a world of difference in their attitude.
That’s how presence works. You become unavoidable even when coaches aren’t looking for you.
I saw this happen multiple times across the weekend. Players I didn’t come to watch ended up on my radar because they made themselves impossible to ignore.
What this means for your next tournament
If you’re playing at Winter Escape, Disney, or any indoor tournaments over the coming months, here’s what Shooting Star reinforced:
Your voice matters more than you think.
If it’s a tight decision between two players of similar ability, the more communicative one is more likely to get recruited. Passivity is harder to fix than your field hockey ability.
You can decide to change this today.
You don’t need new skills. You don’t need to get faster or more technical. You can decide in your next game that you’re going to communicate three times more than you usually do.
You don’t need to be eloquent. You just need to speak. Start by using your voice to ask for the ball, and saying what you’re doing or who you’re marking defensively. Eventually, you can get to organizing others, but these are simple first steps.
Coaches can’t play the game for you.
You can’t control if you have a “yell and tell” coach, but you can take ownership of what you do on the field.
You’re a participant, not a spectator, and your coach can’t do it all for you. We’re looking for players who will solve problems on the field without needing constant direction.
The question I’m sitting with
After three days of watching hundreds of players, here’s what I can’t stop thinking about:
How many talented players disappeared this weekend simply because they stayed quiet?
How many ended up on a program’s recruiting board not because they were the most skilled, but because they made themselves impossible to ignore?
And for the players who were at Shooting Star or Festival: Which one were you?
Because presence is a choice. Technical skill takes years to develop. But communication? That’s something you can change in your next game.
Coming up in Thursday’s premium newsletter: What else I observed at Shooting Star (the patterns in underprepared teams, coaching under pressure, and what the hockey quality revealed about recruiting readiness). Upgrade your subscription now to read it when it drops later this week!