Preparation, pressure, and other Shooting Star takeaways
The patterns that separated teams who figured it out by Sunday from teams who stayed stuck
On Tuesday, I wrote about presence and communication - the pattern that dominated my notes all weekend.
But that wasn’t the only thing I noticed across 50+ games.
After three days in Richmond, I saw trends around how teams prepared (or didn’t), and how different coaching approaches affected player performance under pressure.
This is what else filled my mind and my notes at Shooting Star.
The Thanksgiving tournament reality: Everyone starts underprepared
Let me acknowledge something first: these tournaments are impossible to prepare for properly.
Players are coming off high school seasons that ended a week or two before the tournament. Some were deep in playoff runs. Most had one or two club practices - if that - before showing up to Richmond.
Club coaches are juggling competing priorities: indoor season, upcoming NIT qualifiers, and prep for outdoor showcases. All with limited practice time, players whose attention has been split between high school and club, and bad weather canceling outdoor practices.
This isn’t a criticism. It’s the calendar we have right now.
And it shows in predictable ways on Friday morning.
Pattern 1: The high school star who won’t pass
The most common pattern I saw on Friday: Players who spent the last three months being the star of their high school team struggled to share the ball.
Even when teammates were in better positions. Even when the defense was entirely focused on stopping them.
I watched one forward take on three defenders in a 1 v 3 situation while two unmarked teammates were calling for the ball. This happened three times in one half. Each time, she lost possession.
It makes you wonder - was she on a high school team that, if she didn’t take over, they were likelier to lose? Maybe she had a coach there who begged others to give her the ball, in search of more goals and wins.
The instinct to do everything herself became so ingrained that she couldn’t turn it off after one club practice.
Her club coach was yelling from the sideline to pass. Her teammates were getting frustrated. But the pattern was locked in.
By Sunday, she’d started to adjust. You could see her recognizing the number situation and passing out of contact more often. Trusting her teammates to finish chances. Playing within the system rather than against it.
In an ideal world, that switch could be made before the event, but progression from Friday to Sunday is what we’re watching for as the next best thing.
Pattern 2: The traffic jam
Sometimes, the opposite happens: everyone wants to be involved, so everyone crowds the ball.
One game Friday afternoon, every outfield player except one compressed into an eighth of the field. Defenders, midfielders, forwards - all chasing the ball into one corner while most of the field sat empty.
No width. No depth. No shape.
There are typically a couple of causes of this. Sometimes, it’s individual incentives at play in a team sport; too many players are over-eager to impress at a showcase, so they go chasing the ball.
It could also be the lack of preparation described earlier - or it could be substandard coaching.
Most players hoping to play in college know they should hold their positions. But the instinct to “help” by getting close to the ball overrides the tactical discipline.
Again, what you hope to see is that a team doing this looked different by game two or three. That you could ascertain a formation, and that the field was being stretched wider by the outside midfielders, higher by the forwards, and deeper by the centre-back.
Ultimately, if it didn’t change, that wasn’t usually a good sign for either that team or the individuals on it looking to attract college coach interest.