Louisville measures success through cohesion
Royals capture their first league title since 1991
Miye Kodama admits that she's not the “easiest player to play with.”
“I'm super specific in what I want,” the Louisville forward said Monday, following the Royals' 3-1 win over Marlborough in which Kodama scored two goals. “I want a ball that I can run onto.”
Kodama fortunately has a teammate in midfielder Kylie Morris who is privy to her picky preferences. Morris commands the center of the field for the Royals. Directly aligned with Kodama, feeding her passes that offer the space to turn, take a dribble or two, and slot it in the net.
“We kind of read each other's minds,” Morris said.
On Monday, that synchronicity sprung to life when Morris tossed a throw-in to Kodama in stride before she volleyed it into a top corner of the net.
It's a steady connection like that — one that's been built over seven years of sharing the soccer field — that Louisville head coach Ariana Martinez is seeking throughout her roster as the Royals embark in the CIF Southern Section playoffs.
Martinez and the Royals (15-3 overall, 7-0 in Angelus League) wrapped up league play Wednesday against Notre Dame Academy.
They had held clean sheets — a stat Martinez harped on as a measuring stick for the playoffs — in each game since they faced Marlborough on Jan. 10.
With their win Monday, the Royals clinched their first league championship since 1991 when they split it with Alemany.
For Martinez, boxes have certainly been checked, but to turn a successful regular season into a lengthy postseason run, she says her team needs to improve its cohesion and develop chemistry similar to what Kodama and Morris enjoy.
During the offseason before her second campaign as the Royals head coach, Martinez said she had a greater chance to learn about her players and strengthen personal connections off the field as opposed to last year when she was acclimating to the job.
“I learned, in the offseason, a lot of them run track,” she said. “It's really cool to see that a lot of our students here at Louisville are three-season athletes.”
Martinez doubles as an assistant athletic director at the private school in Woodland Hills, so she remains involved with a number of her players' athletic journeys even when she's not their direct mentor.
On the flip side, Morris gathered that Martinez values a sturdy culture. And Kodama, who described her coach as “level-headed,” noticed a fire appears in her personality when they need a push in significant games.
“She will flip a switch that we don't see all the time,” Kodama said.
Martinez will turn it on especially when Louisville finds itself in physical affairs and needs a spark, the types of games Kodama expects to see come playoff time.
When it's not Martinez galvanizing her girls, bringing them together with her team talks, it's Morris and Kodama who take that role, calling for a huddle before each half. They stand shoulder to shoulder in the circle and deliver a message that excites the team or settles them depending on their energy in that moment.
Both at Louisville and on their club team, the Northwest Breakers, Morris and Kodama are co-captains, collaborating on speeches, like they do give-and-go plays.
“At first, we were super rocky playing together,” Kodama said. “We didn't know when to make runs, when to not, when to play it over, when to play it back.”
Kodama remembers their styles coalescing during a tournament in eighth grade. It carried over as the two began playing together at Louisville. It's been a defining factor this season, present in their team huddles and, on Monday, in that throw-in. Martinez claims that was not something the team had practiced, but rather an improvisation between two players who, at times, seem to share a mind.
But before their lead could extend to three, and before Morris and Kodama addressed their teammates before the second half, Martinez implemented a tweak to her game plan.
She wanted the Royals to play “proactively,” insisting her defense dictate the flow rather than let Marlborough put them on their backfoot with its attacks.
“It should be a chain reaction,” she said, mimicking the movement with her dry-erase marker across her whiteboard. “We should all be sliding as one.”
A team moving in unison, similar to the standard that its leaders have set.