Welcome to the
Goalkeeping Newsletter. Today's issue is about attacking the ball on a dive.
Having just returned from the UAB
Women's Soccer Camp, I saw a pattern that seems to happen everywhere I look with
keepers. First of all, when a keeper is working on the technique of diving,
starting with the sitting position, I see most keepers start off diving
backwards. Rather then forcing their upper bodies forward to attack the ball and
to further cut off the angle, they end up diving backwards and losing a large
part of their range. It gets progressively worse as they work their way up to
their knees, and then catchers’ position and finally the standing position. On
each level, the keeper tends to get further away from the ball.
This is actually an easy thing to
correct. A couple of things have to be concentrated on and this problem will go
away. First, the stance becomes extremely important. If the keeper will make
sure she has assumed a proper stance with her knees bent and her hands out in
front of the feet, this will get her upper body leaning in the correct way and
encourage her to come forward on the first movement. The next thing to
concentrate on is that as the opposing player prepares to shoot, the keeper must
step into the play. This is the way a keeper gets to the spot to cut off the
angle. As the field player approaches the ball the keeper will step in and as
the player plants her foot to shoot the ball, the keeper must reset into the
keepers ready position. In training, I refer to this as taking a step and then a
hop into the ready position. As this step and hop is taking place, the keeper
will keep her hands in front of her lead foot at all times. This will insure
that she keeps her upper body coming forward and attacking the ball on the dive.
Lastly, make sure that your power step (the step you take after you leave the
ready position to get height on your dive) goes forward. This step should be in
the exact same direction that the dive will be executed and while this step is
being done, the hands must again be in front of the lead foot at all times. If
these three things are done, it should guarantee that the dive would go forward
allowing you to attack the ball. Please understand that while I am talking about
diving forward, I am not referring to a forward dive. This simply means your
upper body should start out in front of the horizontal line you are diving from.
I hope this clears some things up
and helps everyone become more aggressive in attacking the ball while diving.
