PDFE #3

For this PDFE, I observed a soccer game for a team I used to play for in Dallas. Their game was this past Saturday. While the team was warming up, the best demonstration of reaction time I could think of would be when the goalie was getting ready. When she was preparing for the game, she had someone start to throw the ball in different directions while she got her reactions warmed up. Then she moved on to warm up in the big goal while the other team members practiced shooting. An example of Hick’s Law would be when a defender was caught by herself by two offenders. Her reaction time to get to the girl who was going to shoot was very slow because of the different things that could have happened. They could pass the ball back in forth, just dribble the ball in to shoot, shoot from far away, shoot from close up, etc. Because of all the different ways the play could go, the defender was uncertain how to act and was not able to react quick enough to help prevent a shot on goal. A psychological refractory period occurred when a player was dribbling the ball down the field and came to a defender. The girl with the ball faked one way but went the other. The defender had a slower reaction to the second movement because she had already been faked out once and maybe thought it would happen again. For spatial and temporal anticipation, an example would be when each half started. The girls who did not have the kick off knew exactly what to expect from the other team and when to expect it. They knew that as soon as the whistle blew, the girls who have the ball are going to kick off. Kicking off almost always begins the same way…two girls are in the center circle and one passes the ball to the other. Because the team that didn’t have the ball knew exactly which girl the ball was going to first, they could automatically run in that direction as soon as the whistle blew. It was fun visiting my old team, and they turned out having a great game winning with a score of 3-1.