Something strange happened in the fall of 1988. For the first time in five years, the Byki were not preparing for their usual entry into the Odeum's D League. Instead, I was busy investigating the possibilities for outdoor soccer. Ever since the club was formed, being competitive in outdoor soccer had been our long-term goal. Until now, indoor soccer had been the club's only outlet for competitive play. I had run across some leads for outdoor leagues which would suit the Byki both competitively and organizationally.
I knew that indoor soccer had given us our share of pleasure and disappointment, and had provided us with some excellent learning experiences. The indoor game, however, was not a good measure of what kind of soccer players we really were. The artificial constructs of indoor soccer, like the dasher boards and no offside, help bridge some of the gap between talented and poorly-skilled players. Such players, whose best attribute is to kick the ball and then chase it, rather than control it, can find themselves on almost even footing with players having much better technique. Skill usually wins out even in indoor soccer, but it seems unfair to give bad soccer teams a handicap. There's something inherently wrong with a game that permits substandard play to succeed.
This is not to say indoor soccer is a bad variation of the great game. What it does say is that indoor soccer works best when played simply for the fun of it, as opposed to playing competitively. Indoor soccer, in one form or another, has been played all over the world by professionals during their off-seasons as a means of staying in shape. No one, however, takes it seriously enough to care about winning or losing. In early 1989, FIFA organized the first world championship for its version of indoor soccer. Most of the competing countries sent either second division players or promising youth players for the purpose of international seasoning. The best players were already occupied, playing outdoors with their club teams. Indoor soccer is taken seriously in the United States primarily because of the absence of professional outdoor soccer. The time was right for the Byki to move outdoors.
After a team meeting in December 1988, the club decided to forgo playing indoor soccer in order to pursue outdoor opportunities. It was also at that time that I returned to my role as player-coach of the Byki. Even though I would have preferred more time away from coaching, I was excited by the new challenge that outdoor soccer would bring. We began training in January at Holy Cross High School in anticipation of a spring season.
The preparation would involve a lot more than just doing a few wind sprints in a gymnasium. The first thing we needed was more players. While indoor soccer allowed us to get by with the bare minimum at times, outdoor soccer would require eleven able-bodied players just to take the field. My goal was to find fifteen players I could rely on. I hoped that a roster of that size would take care of any injuries and absences. The team welcomed three experienced players into the fold: Dino Giolas, Mike Muyres and Jim Conway. Dino joined the team through his association with Stef; Mike and Jim played with some of us in indoor pick-up games at New Trier High School. All three possessed excellent technical skills which would improve the club's standing significantly. Mark Sokolowski rejoined the Byki in April, following his return from Florida. His poor level of fitness unfortunately left many doubts as to how much he could contribute.
After much wrangling, the Byki were registered in the North Suburban Soccer League. The biggest pitfall was finding a home field. After six weeks' worth of rejection, the league assigned us to the field at Emerson Junior High in Niles. We shared that field with two other clubs. The league was split into two geographical divisions and played a seven-game schedule. The top two teams in each division would move into the playoff round. The league was now in its eighth season and had swelled to eighteen teams. A kindly gentleman named Jack Nicholas was commissioner of the league. He provided the newcomers with a bit of advice which would prove to be prophetic. His experience had shown that the best-organized clubs are the ones that finish at the top of the standings. I felt buoyed by that observation because I felt that the Byki, if nothing else, were reasonably well-organized. I recalled the mayhem connected with Liths SC; if a club run that way could survive in the Metropolitan League, then the Byki should do fine in our league. I would later painfully learn that I was missing the forest for the trees.
In mid-May the Byki took on a ragtag bunch of Central Americans (dubbed by us as FC Logan Square) in a friendly game. It would be a good test of our progress after five weeks of outdoor training. Our lineup for this match looked like this: Tony Terraciano in goal; Ed Pinkowski at sweeper, Henry Zajac at stopper, Tommy Smerz and I at outside fullbacks; Andy Chudzinski, John Starkowski, Mike and Jim at midfield; Doug Roth and Dino were the twin strikers. Stef Wiecek and Mark Rys were absent for this match. The Byki took ontrol of the game early, taking particular advantage of the opponents' lack f fitness. Logan Square also proved to be quite susceptible to the offside rap, a tactic which totally disrupted them. The Byki raced to a 3-0 lead at alftime and walked away 5-2 victors. While our play was choppy at times, especially after intermission, we played better than I thought we would. Our communication and teamwork were very good and the boys were mindful of the tactical details I had stressed before the game. While there was plenty of room for improvement, I saw it as a good start.
As the league opener approached, I finalized my goals for the club. I felt we could be competitive because the nucleus of the team had been intact for about five years and the new players would only improve our standard of play. I also realized that it takes time to incorporate new players into the lineup. The transition is all the more difficult in outdoor soccer, where eleven players must find a way to cooperate, as opposed to indoors, where there are only six. Although I had not seen any other teams in the league, I anticipated a higher level of play than we had experienced at the Odeum. No one would bother getting an outdoor team together if they weren't at least somewhat serious about it. Because it takes so much preparatory work for outdoor soccer, I expected our future opponents to have some good ball players. The Byki had some good players of their own, and while the team had never looked better, I wasn't sure how they would respond to increasingly difficult competition. I would be happy if we played well enough to win as many games as we lost.
Our league season began three weeks later with a road game in Bannockburn. The Byki got clobbered by a score of 5-0 and the match wasn't even that close. Bannockburn clearly had an experienced side and we later learned that they were perennial contenders for the league title. We wilted when faced with the challenge presented by an obviously more talented opponent. In fact, our play only got worse as time wore on.
This first match was really a microcosm of the season in general. Our play was coherent only in spurts, and not for extended periods. The level of play in the NSSL was definitely higher than we had ever experienced. Still, if we had played with more consistency, we could have beaten some of the weaker teams and possibly given the better ones a bit of a tussle. I felt that we had more talent than at least three of our opponents; we came away with a tie and two losses in those matches. Our final record was an abysmal 0-6-1, good for eighth place in our ten-team division. It was the first winless season in club history. Our lack of consistency was related in part to our inability to play with an outdoor soccer mentality. The club's long association with indoor soccer left many of the players with bad habits related to technique and fitness. When carried over to the outdoor field, these bad habits caused the Byki to be glaringly exploited by the league's better teams. All of us had been brought up on outdoor soccer; that we could forget how to play was something I never expected.
Our other problem was the instability of our lineup. Some players appeared to lose their commitment as our poor play continued. While lineup changes due to injury must always be dealt with, the unexpected absences really hurt the club. We never fielded the same lineup twice during the seven-game season. I never figured I would have to motivate the players to just show up. With the team playing in a fog already, forcing players to move to unfamiliar positions did not help matters.
In the end, the ineptitude of the Byki could be traced back to poor preparation. The soccer adage about games being won and lost on the practice field hit home for us. A team that has not done its work in practice is headed for a date with disaster when the game begins. Bonehead mistakes like bad throw-ins, missed penalty kicks and a fear of head balls made our performances at times look downright embarrassing.
The source of preparation for any team begins and ends with its coach. When a coach doesn't take care of business during training, he is virtually helpless at gametime. Once the game begins, a team's fortunes are out of his hands. The players can only rely on what has been learned in practice. I took a lot of things for granted as the Byki prepared for the outdoor season and those bad assumptions came back to haunt us. While some problems were easy to correct, like changing our system from four midfielders to three, others were rooted in deficiencies in the fundamental techniques of some players. Skills and tactics that were of no use indoors became essential outside. I expected that simple things like using one's head to make a defensive clearance were obvious to everyone. That became obvious only when long balls began falling over our heads onto the waiting feet of opponents. Although it sounds like a cliche, there was plenty to be learned from this supremely negative experience. I likened this outdoor season to our first indoor session in Palatine in 1983. There we approached a new variation on the game we had played for so long. That indoor session left us searching for a lot of answers. Because we wanted desperately to play good soccer, we kept at it until we learned what it took to play at the top level. In the summer of 1989 the Byki were forced to re-learn the game they had once known so well. The search for the answers was beginning all over again.