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To Wood, Relaxation Is the Goal

By Steven Goff
Special to The Washington Post
November 14, 1991

It was September, the birth of A.J. Wood's promising soccer career at the University of Virginia, and nothing was going right. Shots clanked off posts and flew wildly in cockeyed directions. Others skipped off the side of his foot.

"It kept building," he said last week. "Every shot I missed, every shot that hit the post, I started to think about it. It became so frustrating."

Enter Tom Perrin, a Virginia assistant men's basketball coach with a PhD in sports psychology.

He sat down with Wood, The Post's All-Met player of the year and a 36-goal scorer at Georgetown Prep last season, and tried to improve his mental preparation. He told him to replay each bad moment, every miskick and blown chance, and to visualize what could have changed failure into success.

The informal therapy has produced startling results. Wood had 10 goals in the last 10 regular season games (11 overall) and is one of the reasons the No. 1-ranked Cavaliers (16-1-1) have won 13 straight matches heading into the 28-team NCAA tournament.

Virginia earned a bye and will host the winner of a first-round match between Hartford and Columbia in the round of 16 on Nov. 24 at Scott Stadium.

For Wood, it has been one dramatic weekend after another.

His emergence began on a Sunday (Sept. 29), with the only goal in a 1-0 victory over North Carolina. The next Saturday (Oct. 5), he had a goal in a 4-3 win at North Carolina State. A week later he scored two late goals to beat American, 2-0. Eight days later at Duke, he tallied twice in overtime for a 5-2 victory.

Next was Clemson on a Sunday (Oct. 27): He scored twice in 43 seconds late in the match to produce a 2-1 victory. Then in the last regular season game -- of course, during the weekend -- he connected on a header with 2:40 left to break a 1-1 tie against George Mason.

Now if only he could score consistently during the week.

"In the beginning, when things weren't going well," he said, "everyone was so supportive. They believed in me and, in retrospect, that helped me a lot. I wanted to prove something. I wanted to say, 'Hey, I can score goals, I can come up big when times are tough.' "

Cavaliers Coach Bruce Arena attributes Wood's emergence to his young player "being able to relax a little and review why he was having troubles. Sometimes these kids need more help than I can give. Tom helped him play out some of the situations and accept the responsibility of scoring goals. Now he looks forward to it."

There were uneasy times when Wood was apprehensive taking the pressure-filled role as the goal scorer on one of the most successful soccer programs in the last 10 years. He had played for the under-16 and under-18 national teams and was the top-rated forward on the Parade magazine all-American team last year after leading Georgetown Prep to a 15-0 record.

But this was different. The talent level is so high in the ACC and among the nation's elite teams, he said, sometimes he felt bewildered.

Said Perrin: "Soccer is a game of incredible patience. Early on, A.J. tended to get down on himself if he missed an opportunity or two. And we've tried to talk about not feeling bad about missing a chance to score a goal. . . . You have to put missed opportunities behind you and think about the next one."

And the next ones will be at the biggest time of all -- the NCAA tournament in which the Cavaliers have been to the quarterfinals the previous three years with a co-national title in 1989. This season, they could get their first outright championship, many believe, and Wood certainly will play an important role in the pursuit.

"A.J.'s the all-American boy," Arena said. "You love him when he's bad and love him when he's good. He always gives 100 percent and always plays his heart out. Sometimes you have to wait until the 89th minute to see the results, but that's A.J. Sometimes he's not the prettiest player, but he always gets the job done. You accept him for who he is, and now he's proving he can win games for his team."