I feel that I need to be the most creative when I play soccer. Whether it be playing on the field or leading the team to victory, the sport requires an immense amount of creativity in order to dominate other teams. One time that jumps out at me was three years ago when my team was preparing for an international tournament in Las Vegas.
We had been training and playing together for about five months now and we were playing well, but something didn’t seem to be clicking. The team moral was good and usually once a week we would have an amazing practice and feel confident about the upcoming tournament. But I think that all of us knew that it would take something bigger in order to show well at this competition. My coach also realized this, so, one day at practice he sat us down and we talked the whole practice. He said that we would be trying something new and this would allow for more creativity in the attacking third of our formation. (I was playing forward at the time). It wasn’t that I had no creativity before this, it was just that it wasn’t a key component of my game. But learning that this new skill of being creative would be implemented into our play gave me confidence to try some new things out. The practices from then on seemed to change a little. We tried new drills and during our scrimmages, I felt impowered to try different moves and tricks that I had never done before. I felt that I was truly being creative in our team’s different approach to the game. Later on, when the time came for the tournament to be played, our team was a whole different force to be reckoned with. The attacking players felt a resounding confidence to create different opportunities towards goal and it definitely showed. We ended up making it to the final, beating a team from Scotland 4-0 along the way. I would say that all of this was thanks to my coach for allowing the game to be played in a more creative way. I think this story directly shows the importance of creativity in leadership. If my coach had not sat my team down to talk about a different style of play that we would be implementing, my team would have never had the chance to create new opportunities and we surely would have never done so well at the tournament. My coach sparked an innovation in all of us players that, in return, produced immeasurable outcomes that would affect me to this day. I have always understood that approaching things from a different angle was important, but I never was able to see this in action until my coach helped me and my team. He allowed each of his players to be leaders in their own way.
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