Dare to Dazzle In Ringette Provincials: Stop Thinking About the Outcome

By Lisa Brown

When I was 21, I went into a major scoring slump. I became obsessed with whether I was scoring goals or not. Of course, I started scoring less, not more.

Finally I decided I needed a new mental toughness strategy.

I stopped thinking about whether or not I was scoring and started focusing on HOW to score. Oddly enough, as soon as I started thinking about how to score goals, I started to notice some interesting things:

–I saw that most goals were scored from pretty close to the net…between the net and the hash marks. I had been shooting from above the hash marks. Bad!

Here’s a quick video clip to check out what I mean. Notice how the ring carrier fights to get close enough to the net BEFORE she shoots!

–I noticed that the best goal scorers use certain dekes to get around the low defence in the triangle. They didn’t try to get around the top of the triangle where the centre was.

They isolated the defender at the bottom and tried to get around her.

–I realized that I needed to practice a couple of special shots to score on the best goalies in the world. For example, I needed an awesome high backhand shot because all the goalies could predict a wrist shot and stop it.

Suddenly, instead of obsessing about goal scoring, I became fascinated with these new things I noticed. By watching the best snipers in the world, I slowly started to imitate their moves.

I started scoring more! The great thing is, the goals felt like a bonus. The real joy was getting better. I learned that when I focused on goal scoring (something I couldn`t fully control), I scored less.

When I focused on things I could control (shooting from the right place, taking the right shots), I scored more.
Cool.

Light it up out there,
Lisa Brown