The new girls’ varsity soccer coach James Sampson teaches student-athletes strategic thinking, teamwork, a positive outlook on failure, and application of skills learned in soccer to everyday life through diverse team-building drills, he said.
Sampson coached at Rancho for the past six years before coaching MHS this year and has played soccer for over twenty years, he said. He wants players to learn how to think strategically on the field, he added.
“I don’t like the long ball game,” Sampson said. “I like the short passing game. Find the open space, and then we pass it. Our team will do a lot of running, but it won’t be useless running. It’ll be smart. It’s trying to play the game with your head versus your feet.”
The team practices with Rondo drills to improve their soccer skills and strategies, Sampson said. In a Rondo drill, a group of players tries to keep the ball away from a smaller group of players in a similar manner to ‘monkey in the middle’, according to 360player.com.
“Through the Rondo drills, we learn how to pass the ball efficiently in small, tight quarters, and then we expand that out to the larger field,” Sampson said. “We learn to be aggressive. We need to be aggressive when the ball comes across so that we can potentially score. Focus on the next play even if the previous play was negative. The biggest thing I try to tell the girls isn’t necessarily what they’re successful at, but what they should do after they aren’t successful.”
The biggest improvement areas for the team are communication skills and accepting negative results to learn from them, Sampson said.
“We need to improve on communication and learning that it’s okay to fail,” Sampson said. “That’s one of the biggest things I’ve noticed. The girls sometimes get down on themselves because their play was not successful. We’re working on being okay with failure and turning it into something positive.”
Sampson teaches the team members to apply the teamwork and character-building skills they learned from soccer to other areas of life, he said.
“I want them to realize that those skills do apply to soccer, but they also apply way beyond soccer,” Sampson said. “They apply way beyond high school, well beyond college. They can apply those skills to everyday life.”
Varsity player Marissa Agraz, a senior, has a positive view of Sampson, she said.
“I think he’s a good coach,” Agraz said. “I think he’ll keep us focused. He wants us to win too, and I can see it. His methods are a little different from what I’m normally used to, but I can see them helping the team already.”
Sampson wants the team to develop teamwork and close relationships with each other, he said.
“I want them to feel like this is their extended family,” Sampson said. “They can rely on each other, not only on the soccer field but also outside of it.”
Agraz also supports the emphasis on team building, she said.
“My favorite thing about soccer is the people,” Agraz said. “The most important thing I learned is how to get along with my teammates, stay consistent, and work harder.”
The team’s strong bonds between its members is one of its strong points, varsity player Sydney Bada, a junior, said.
“I like how even though we barely started, we’re pretty close,” Bada said. “We all really know each other, so we have a good bond.”
Sampson wants the team members to understand his philosophy for being a student-athlete, he said.
“It’s unique playing for a high school because it’s like a name brand,” Sampson said. “Everybody knows Milpitas High School. When you say, ‘I play for Milpitas High School’, that means a lot. So I want the girls, regardless of how the season turns out, to be proud to wear that name.”