# data[].attributes.body
When I began my soccer career years ago, I had a ton to learn. From the motor skills such as how to properly dribble the ball to the more conceptual aspects like the positions that make up the team, I was a relatively blank slate and was ready to take in all the new information. While learning all of the conceptual rules was pretty easy for me, it was learning the motor skills and then applying these rules at the same time that I slightly struggled with. Learning the game of soccer was a process for me and it is now clear how this process followed Fitts and Posner's Three-Stage Model. The first of the stages was the Cognitive Stage. This was when I relied heavily on the verbal and cognitive processes from myself and my coaches. I sometimes had to talk myself through the steps of dribbling the ball or taking a shot. I also had to consciously think about the rules of the game. During this stage I tested out a myriad of strategies when it came to my motor skills trying to find the one that was most successful. It was during this time that the improvements of my skills were greatest, despite the inconsistencies that were also experienced. However as my performances became more consistent and my abilities improved, I began to enter the Associative Stage. It was during this time that I had found the most effective strategies and my improvements began to become more gradual. I was finally able to perform the actions with less thought and certainly less verbal direction. It was also during this stage that I was able to truly detect my errors and inconsistencies on my own without the help of my coach. During this stage was also when I became better at reading the environmental cues around me, most specifically the actions of the other team. I could recognize what my opponents were doing and respond accordingly. A few years into the sport I finally entered the Autonomous Stage. It was here that I was able to perform the motor skills automatically and with very little conscious thought to the conceptual aspects of the game. Often times I was able to perform certain aspects of the game while also thinking about other things. For example, once I entered this stage I was able to dribble the soccer ball down the field while looking around at the other players contemplating what I was going to do with the ball. During my earlier years, I would have had to spend more attention focusing on the skill of dribbling as to not lose the ball. However with the practice over the years, this skill had become automatic. Looking back, it is clear to see how my learning of soccer progressed through these three stages.

# data[].attributes.body
When I first took up soccer about 15 years ago, I whiffed more times than I would like to admit when attempting to shoot the ball. As a little kid who simply enjoyed running around and kicking willy nilly, I did not think too much about the steps necessary to produce a strong, accurate shot. This is where my coach came in. Being only six years old, he had to tailor his augmented feedback in a way that would be most successful and useful for me to internalize. In lecture we learned about the four cases where augmented feedback may or may not be essential. In this case, the feedback was definitely not essential to me eventually learning the skill, however it certainly enhanced by skill acquisition and allowed me to learn the skill more quickly. My coach used knowledge of performance feedback to help me identify what I was doing wrong. From observing me perform the skill on my own, he took note of the steps I needed to fix in order to properly shoot the ball. He decided the most important step I needed to fix was stepping closer to the ball with my non-shooting foot to allow me to hit the ball better with my shooting foot. After giving me this piece of feedback, he allowed me to perform the skill a few more times on my own before giving me any more feedback. This allowed me think about how I thought I was performing the skill and process the intrinsic feedback. Overtime and with the periodic augmented feedback from my coach, I perfected my shooting form and no longer ended up on my butt from whiffing so hard.

# data[].attributes.body
During the early years of my soccer career I spent a decent amount of time playing goalie. Beyond the stress that comes with being the absolute line of defense for the team, there is the added pressure of being able to anticipate where the ball is going to go. During live game situations I had little trouble playing goalie because it was easy to predict where the ball will go given a person's body placement and there was often enough time to react and move in the correct direction. However, it was during penalty kicks that I struggled the most. This aspect of the game is all about the goalie anticipating which direction the shooter was going to shot towards and when. The main type of anticipation goalies must utilize is event or spacial anticipation. When standing face to face with the penalty shooter, I would have to try and read their body position and make a guess about which way to dive. Should I dive left, dive right, or stay right in the middle? This process of anticipation is vital to the role of a goalie, if the goalie instead waited until the shot was taken, they would move too late to stop the ball. However there are costs that come with anticipation and that can clearly be seen when the goalie dives the wrong direction. I can clearly remember times when I drove the complete opposite way and got up to see the ball in the back of the net. So while there is a definite risk of anticipation, without it a goalie would likely never stop a penalty kick.

# data[].attributes.body
As we learned in lecture there are four characteristics of performance that are exhibited by someone who has learned a motor skill. Once I learned to perfect my penalty kick form and execution, I demonstrated all of theses characteristics. The first of the four is improvement. Learning to take a penalty kick requires the proper footwork leading up to kicking the ball and positioning the body in the proper way as to not send the ball flying high or wide. As I learned to incorporate these tips into my form and execution, I saw large improvements in the percentage of penalty kicks I made. I exhibited a negatively accelerated curve because at first these large improvements were made, but the more I practiced and the better I did, there became less room for improvement so the curve began to level off. The second characteristic is consistency. Following my extended period of practice, which included taking between 10-15 penalty kicks every practice, I began to become consistent in the number of shots I made. I generally had only one or two shots stopped by the goalie or missed wide each time I practiced. The third characteristic was persistence. This was exhibited in the times of practice following long breaks or off seasons. During the winter months where we tended to have some time off, I did not practice penalty kicks at all. However when I did return to practice weeks to a month or so later, the effects of the learning and practice I had done previously was still evident. I still made the majority of my shots. The final characteristic was adaptability. I think this characteristic was slightly more difficult to demonstrate, however it was somewhat shown when I took regular shots in the box. While I did not have the time to prepare and ensure my form and execution were perfect, the practice I had from penalty kicks transferred to my ability to shoot with better form. As with taking penalty kicks, it is important not to lean too far back or to one side when taking regular shots, otherwise the ball will go over or wide of the goal. So this practice of form I had with my penalty shots resulted in improvements in my game-time shots.

# data[].attributes.body
My high school soccer coach was a huge fan of the website Hudl, which allows for the editing and sharing of videos from games, practices, etc. He had someone record every game and from time to time he would record portions of our practices, such as when we would practice shoot and penalty kick form. We would then take a portion of practice time to meet and go over the video feedback. As discussed in lecture, the success of this form of feedback truly depends on the skill level of the learners. While the majority of our team had been playing soccer for years and were pretty advanced, there were a couple players who were relatively new to the sport and required a little more direction. This distinction could be clearly seen as we watched these videos. For the more advanced players, we were usually able to see our mistakes on our own and figure out what we should have done differently. However the newer players needed a little more direction from our coach to recognize and interpret the information in the video. However over the course of the seasons, these players began to develop a better understanding of this feedback type and required less and less feedback. As mentioned in lecture though, there was certain a greater benefit for both the beginners and the advanced players when our coach gave some attention-directing instructions to the mistakes that were less obvious.

# data[].attributes.headline
Anything you can do I can do too - My left foot to the right

# data[].attributes.subject
Anything you can do I can do too - My left foot to the right

# data[].attributes.body
As a kid, I only took shots with my dominant foot. I can remember running a near 360 around the ball to set up my right foot to shoot before I would ever attempt a shot with my left. While this may have flown when I was six, the older I got the clearer it became that I needed to learn to shoot with my non-dominant foot. The first day I decided I would practice this, I was curious but nervous to see how poorly I would perform the skill. But to my surprise, my left foot shot was not half bad. It certainly was not as accurate or as strong as the shots I was able to take with my right, but I still was able to complete the movement pretty well. What I did not realize at the time, but have come to learn through this class was that this ability to shoot with my left foot was a result of bilateral transfer. The Generalized Motor Program (GMP) of taking a shot with my right foot was one I had practiced time and time again. This GMP was also what I was accessing when I began practicing shooting with my left foot. So through of all the practice I had done with my dominant foot, I was strengthening the GMP, which resulted in my ability to shoot with my left foot despite it being a novel task.

# data[].attributes.body
As a defender,  I was often delegated the task of taking most, if not all, of the goal kicks and free kicks regardless of where they were on the field. Goal kicks often required less accuracy and were mostly about clearing the ball as far as possible. On the other hand, with free kicks I was often instructed to aim for specific parts of the field so these required more practice. Because free kicks have the potential to occur at any part of the field, I incorporated a lot of variability into my practice of this task. I took free kicks from just outside the box, deep in the left and right corners, and at varying distances from the half-field line. Rather than simply taking 10 practice kicks at each spot, my coach had me take a couple in one area then a couple in another and so on. So I utilized an intermediate condition of small randomized blocks This definitely helped me develop an understanding of how hard I needed to kick the ball depending on the location of the ball and where I was aiming for. Furthermore, this variability of practice on my free kicks also had a positive effect on my performance on goal kicks. Despite not practicing them directly, the practice time I put in for the free kicks transferred over to my goal kicks.

# data[].attributes.body
It was the night before the state championship game and I couldn't sleep due to both the excitement and nervousness I had for the following day. I'd been in a state championship game before, only to have the State Champ title ripped away from us from a missed penalty kick. It was a feeling we had absolutely no intention of repeating so penalty kicks were incorporated into many of our practices leading up to this game. Laying in bed trying to fall asleep, my mind drifted to those penalty kicks. Determined to not let that happen again, I began to play the steps of my penalty kick over and over in my mind. From my walk to the penally spot all the way to my celebration after a made shot. While I didn't know the term then, I was taking part in mental practice. Mental practice is the active cognitive or mental rehearsal of a physical skill in the absence of overt physical movements. I rehearsed this movement over and over until I fell asleep. The next day we won the state championship game, although it did not come down to penalty kicks. However I know I would have been more than prepared if it had.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kaelee McIlwraith added a new photo - with Mikaella Sabinash and 3 others.