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It was the championship game in one of my summer soccer tournaments and regulation time had just ended.  The game was sent into an additional period.  By the end of the extra period, the game was still tied.  That meant we would decide the winner of the tournament by shooting penalty kicks.  I had been taken out of the game just before the extra period had ended so I was not allowed to take  a penalty kick.  I anxiously watched with the rest of my teammates as shooters from both teams took turns shooting penalty kicks.  I will never forget when my teammate - one of my best friends - took his one and only penalty kick ever.

We would always practice taking penalty kicks at the very end of every practice just to end on a fun activity but also in case a situation like this came up.  It was here we learned to refine our techniques.  Because this was before my 361 days, I had no idea about Fitts' law and the speed/accuracy trade-off (an increase in accuracy leads to a decrease in speed and an increase in speed leads to a decrease in accuracy) or that we were even implementing such a law into our practices.  Every time we took a shot at the goal in practice, we had to determine if we wanted to shoot the ball with the greatest power or greatest accuracy.  The majority of the time, those shots with the most power required us to increase the movement speed of our leg as it struck the ball. This would cause our accuracy to decrease because we were trading the accuracy at which we struck the ball with our leg-moment speed. The most powerful shots would almost always go wildly off target and those shots with the most accuracy would be blocked by the goalie because they were moving at a slower rate.  The idea was that we needed to find our individual sweet spot.

Continuing  the story, my teammate was placed fourth in our shooting lineup.  If he made his shot, we would win the game.  The ball was placed at the indicated spot.  The goalie took his position and my teammate took his.  The field was silent as everyone watched in anticipation.  I didn't know exactly what was going on in my teammates head I only hoped he would find the sweet spot between speed and accuracy.  My teammate began running toward the ball, the goalie readied down in his stance, my teammate approached the ball struck it.  I guess he wanted more speed than accuracy because the ball was sent flying 30 feet above the goal into outer space.

Had my teammate remembered he needed to reduce his speed to increase his accuracy, he probably would have won us the game instead of knocking out an orbiting satellite.

Our next penalty shooter won us the game but to this day we still talk about that fateful shot.  Not so much that he missed but more so because my teammate was the coach's son.  After the game when he went up to his dad, the coach said "We got some work to do son".

This short video is a pretty accurate representation of what went down:

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As I progressed in my soccer career, my skills became exceptional.  I was able to use both feet, I could pass the ball across the field and I was agile enough to manipulate the ball with precision.

There is one specific instance that sticks out in my mind.  I was playing left defender and had taken a free kick from just outside our goal box.  I cleared the ball well past half field into open space hoping one of the strikers would be able to capitalize on possession so close to the opponent's goal.  Unfortunately, that did not happen and the other team was able to get the ball to a lone striker who took the ball and sprinted at our goal.  As the opposing striker sprinted toward the goal I ran along side in an effort to take away the strikers angle and hopefully buy some time for the rest of my team to catch up.  Our goalie rushed the striker in an attempt to stop his progress and the striker chipped the ball over our goalies head.   I never stopped my run so I was able to intercept the ball before it went in our goal.  The striker then came back to finish the job.  As he sprinted directly at me, I took a stutter step to my left side and the defender followed.  I then pushed the ball to my right with the outside of my right foot and was able to create enough space to take a dribble and clear the ball back up to my team.  The striker was a good sport about it.  He came up gave me a handshake and said "Wow you got me".

The reason I had "got him" could be attributed to the psychological refractory period which essentially says that when presented with two stimuli, the second stimuli cannot be processed until the fist stimulus has been processed.  Because I had presented a stimulus indicating I would go to my left,  the striker responded in the obvious way by preparing to block the run to my left.  I had timed my move just right so when I pushed the ball to the right, the striker was still processing the first stimulus of me traveling to my left.  Because of this, he was unable to react quick enough to switch directions and run in the opposite direction.  This allowed me to free up space and clear the ball.

This wikihow pretty much sums up what I did.

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The game of soccer is much more complex than it seems.  So you can imagine that a 4 year old going to his first practice would be pretty overwhelmed by all the rules, techniques and strategy associated with the game.  All these things would come later.  For now, the main focus was learning how to kick, pass, and dribble.  So, through my first few years of playing, that is what I focused on.

All my life I had been a true righty.  Right handed in writing,  using a fishing reel with the handle on the right side of the reel and, more importantly to this story, right footed.  So through my first few years of learning the game of soccer, I used only my right foot.  I became extremely accurate in my passing and exceptional in my dribbling with my right foot.  Because the level of skill required to be outstanding in a league made of nine year olds is minimal, I got away with only having to use my right foot.  Never did I even debate attempting a pass, shot, or dribble with my left foot.

That is until I advanced further along in my soccer career.  When someone only uses one foot, they are very easy to defend because you only need to block the angles coming off of the one side of the body with that foot.  As opposing players got better, they came to this realization and took away the angles I would normally use with my right foot.  As a result, I struggled.

During one game,  I was put in as left midfielder.  As my teammate set up for a corner kick on the opponents right corner, the rest of my team crowded the opponent's goal box while I maintained the perimeter of the left side of the box in case the ball slipped through everyone.  My teammate crossed the ball into the box from a corner kick but it was too strong and sailed over everyone.  The ball was heading right for me.  Unconsciously, I trapped the ball and sent the ball into the bottom left corner of the goal all with my left foot.  I sat and stared at the goal bewildered by the fact I had used my left foot.

The game carried on and throughout the rest of the game I continued to use my left foot for dribbling, passing, and shooting.  It was a shocking discovery.  I had not one, but two feet!  I went home after the game confused as to how my left foot was all of a sudden a gift from the soccer gods.

It turns out, the explanation for my left foot becoming better could be because of bilateral transfer.  More specifically, the Identical Elements Theory which states that positive transfer will occur if the elements and context of the skill are similar.   Through all my early stages of learning , some amount of the skills I developed using my right foot had transferred to my left because both the context and elements of the skills required to play with my right and left foot were almost identical.

This video is a similar to the scenario described above:

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June 2015.  Four weeks into the Central Wisconsin Summer Soccer League.  My team, the Wisconsin Rapids Kickers, traveled to D.C. Everest to play the local team.  It was a muggy June evening.  It had rained earlier and the thermostat read well above 90.

Coach put me in the starting lineup, moving me from my comfortable left defender position and converting me to left wing because of my speed (his words not mine).  The game kicked off and the ball was put into play.  Two heavyweight teams exchanged blows.  First our team scored, then D.C., then us again and the cycle continued well into the second half.

The game was tied.  Everyone on the field was exhausted, even the people on the bench were panting in the heat.  The other team had just scored and my team reset the ball at half.  As I lined up on the midfield line, I glanced around at my teammates and we silently devised a plan that would put us ahead.  The whistle blew, and my teammate put the ball into play sending it backward to the defense in an effort to maintain complete control of the ball.  I dropped back to our goal box to help the defense.  The ball was passed around a bit then sent back up to the right corner of the opponents goal box.  At that moment,  I took off like a bat out of hell down the left sideline.  My teammate on the other side of the field saw me coming and sent the ball across the field to my side.  I saw the ball coming my way.  I had to let off the gas just a little and time my kick just perfect.  I watched as the ball dropped toward my foot and  I sent a rocket into the back of the net.

That instance stayed stored away in the deep recesses of my memory until we learned about  visual processing and the concept of Tau in class.  Essentially, Tau states that if you have prior knowledge of the size of an object and the rate at which the object is approaching, you can intercept a moving object.

When this game took place, I had been playing soccer for well over 10 years so visually, I was pretty accustomed to the sizes of soccer balls, their average speed, and where a ball would drop in when kicked from what angle.  So, it was pretty easy for me to coordinate my motor system with the information from my visual system to intercept the flight path of the ball.  Little did I know, that on that day, I unknowingly and unconsciously implemented this very scientifically derived principle of inverse expansion rate by timing my movements with the speed and angle at which the ball was coming in.

I think we lost that game but I was still pretty excited... defenders don't usually score goals...

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My soccer seasons worked out like this: In the winter months, my summer league practiced indoors.  In the spring and early summer, we competed in tournaments and games.  The season ended around early July and gave us about seven weeks before the high school season started in mid August.

So, I played summer league during the summer after my junior year of high school and was greatly anticipating my senior year season.  However, an unfortunate boating accident caused me to break multiple bones in my right foot.

I was devastated.  It might not be that obvious but playing soccer with one foot is extremely difficult.  So, I consulted my doctor and he said I would be on crutches until tryouts started.  I had been on the varsity team the previous year so I was not worried so much about making the team as I was about losing my skills to help the team win.

Tryouts came around and, just like the doctor said, I was able to get off crutches.  I was excited to get back on the pitch.  Little did I know, I had lost proficiency in so many key motor abilities that were necessary for playing soccer.

Just walking around was awkward.  I remember feeling off balance, stumbling and tripping constantly, a result of my loss in dynamic strength as my right leg was not strong enough to support my body weight.

Due to a lack of practice over the summer, my reaction time increased.  I was unable to react to certain cues quickly.  Cues such as opponent's foot placement, eye movement and body position - aspects critical for a defender trying to tackle the ball.  I could no longer use all of my explosive strength to push off the ground to sprint or implement a fake as my entire right leg had become weaker.   Even my stamina was down.  Before the season,  I could run multiple 90 minute games in an afternoon, now, it was a struggle to finish warm-ups.

So, to get back to my normal self, I had to work.  I conditioned myself to increase my stamina.  I ran cone drills that improved the strength and flexibility in my ankle which allowed me to implement all of my explosive strength.  A technique I used to increase my balance that is extremely relevant to this class is the stick test. In the individual differences lab, we performed a balance test by positioning our toes on a 1 inch high 1 inch wide (various lengths) stick and recorded the times. When I was recovering from my injury I never recorded my time but, I used the same methods to increase my balance and strength in my right leg (this probably provides an explanation as to why I was so much better at this test compared to the other ones in the lab). Another method I used to increase my motor abilities was to practice one-on-one with my teammates to become more accustomed to the cues I needed to recognize and react to in order to improve my reaction time.

Over time my foot loosened up and I was able to regain my speed, stamina, strength, reaction time and skill but wow... that sucked