Coach Becky Burleigh and the Florida soccer team are focused on the conditional relationships following a victory over the No. 1 team in the nation.
The Gators (3-1-0) handed defending national champion Florida State (3-1-0) its first loss of the season in UF’s home opener on Sunday.
Last week, Florida scored seven goals, took down two in-state rivals and brought in the accolades. Junior forward Savannah Jordan and freshman midfielder Sarah Troccoli were named Southeastern Conference Offensive Player of the Week and SEC Freshman of the Week, respectively.
Making its first appearance on the sideline for the Gators was an orange oar, a symbol Burleigh hopes will keep the team going in the right direction.
The oar idea came from a meeting Burleigh had over the summer with Western Michigan football coach P.J. Fleck, who told her about his team mantra of ‘Row the boat’.
"When you’re rowing a boat that everybody has to be rowing in the same direction with the same intensity and the same speed together," Burleigh said.
She said a team can reach its destination even if the team stops "rowing", but the journey becomes much more difficult.
"We introduced that idea to our team on Thursday when we played Miami," Burleigh said, "and they kind of got into it a little bit."
Burleigh said how important it was to work for each other, play as a unit, stop worrying about playing perfectly and just play their game — continuing to row the boat.
UF is spending the week focusing on cutting out the conditional relationships and not getting complacent after defeating the nation’s top squad.
Burleigh said conditional relationships, such as the amount of congratulatory text messages she received after the Florida State match, are examples of things that the athletes can’t let affect them heading into Friday’s match against Oklahoma State (2-1-0).
"Now looking forward to (Friday)’s game, we have a whole different set of issues to deal with," Burleigh said. "Sometimes I think we get conditioned to that the way we provide value is through our performance and we don’t believe in that on our team. We really believe in the idea that the character of our team will drive everything."
Burleigh doesn’t want the team to get away from the ‘CPR model’ — the character drives the process drives the result — the team is going to focus back on the character to get away from any pressure that can come from focusing on results or rankings.
Senior center back defenders Claire Falknor and Christen Westphal gave an impassioned speech during halftime of the team’s 4-2 win over Miami on Thursday night that Burleigh thinks really has brought the team together and provided a valuable lesson early this season.
"I think that Claire and Christen just in their willingness to step up in front of our team and sort of be vulnerable. ...if you look at it objectively in that game they made mistakes too," Burleigh said.
"But they were just very resilient in their recovery from those mistakes and they showed just a perfect example of what it looks like to play through mistakes."
With the leadership of the veterans and the mentality of the team to work together to improve rather than focus on mistakes is what Burleigh thinks will help this team the most moving forward.
"We have a lot of work to do still," Burleigh said. "We have to keep rowing."
Follow Ryan Summers on Twitter @RyanSummers18
UF soccer coach Becky Burleigh puts her arm around defender Rachelle Smith (81) following Florida's 3-2 win against Florida State on Aug. 30, 2015, at James G. Pressly Stadium.
