
How a lawyer heeded one Pat Summitt tenet to become Tennessee's winningest coach
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Even inside the opulent owner's suite at Covenant Health Park, there is only so much to do before a rain-delayed minor league baseball game on a Tuesday night.
The Tennessee softball team already has discussed the ceremonial first pitch — someone suggested a pickoff throw — and rehearsed how record-breaking ace Karlyn Pickens can avoid an awkward hug with the Knoxville Smokies' mascot. They annihilated a food spread featuring sliders, hot dogs and chocolate chip cookies in about eight minutes. They took a group photo with team owner Randy Boyd, who's also the president of the University of Tennessee system. He was not, however, their most entertaining visitor.
Advertisement
At one point, a clubhouse attendant arrived with a delivery: A Columbus Clingstones player wrote his phone number on a baseball and sent it up to Lady Vols pitcher Charli Orsini. (She has a boyfriend and the Clingstone is hitting .160. It's a strikeout.)
After all this, it's only 7:38 p.m., and the actual first pitch remains a distant hope. Boredom looms. So two Lady Vols decide to record a TikTok. And they invite their head coach to join.
There was a time when Karen Weekly, sandpaper-tough former litigator, would've been galled by gyrations for social media's sake. This was before Tennessee's coach fought off disillusionment and recommitted herself to enjoying the job as much as doing the job. To remember what tugged her out of a law practice in the first place and to imbue that into her teams. Here and now, after two takes of a TikTok session and three days before an NCAA Tournament regional, a 61-year-old coach and her players are in lockstep.
'You gotta get a little hip into it,' Weekly says, and the third try is a keeper.
College softball teams that win and have fun are not outliers. Silliness is native to the sport. But the Tennessee Lady Volunteers are in a third straight Super Regional particularly because they keep it light when things get heavy, which also happens to be the approach that allowed a star right-hander to punch her way out of a shell and throw a softball faster than any human in history.
The program's first national championship is doable as a result, so long as the Lady Vols don't know any better. 'Our best games,' Pickens says, 'it was like we didn't even realize that the other team was there.'
As Karen Kvale saw it, there were two paths out of the cul-de-sac in Edmonds, Wash.: professional basketball player or Supreme Court justice. Neither seemed unreasonable. She spent hours wearing out her driveway hoop with her sisters, spent many a night at Seattle SuperSonics games and, most critically, her parents never dissuaded her from the idea that there could be an NBA roster spot for her down the line.
Advertisement
As for the latter ambition, well, there was a pretty regimented sense of right and wrong in the Kvale household; to this day, instead of shortcutting to her parking spot over the grass outside the softball complex, Karen Weekly takes the long way because she can hear her father, Chuck, saying that's what sidewalks are for. Reading 'The Brethren' in early adolescence just cinched it. Written by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, the first-ever inside account of the Supreme Court fascinated her. These were the ultimate arbiters of justice. The last line of the problem-solvers.
She became a softball All-American and three-year basketball starter at NAIA Pacific Lutheran University, and then law school at the University of Washington beckoned. She didn't love it. 'I'm thinking, am I really never going to be on a basketball court or a softball field again?' Weekly says now. Still, there would be no quitting. Another Kvale rule: You finish what you start. Besides, her mother had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when Karen was 8. Ruthann Kvale nevertheless resolved to climb to the top row of the stands at sporting events. She wasn't going to let anyone block her view of her girls.
Lesson well learned. 'I refuse to take no for an answer,' Karen Weekly says. 'I refuse to believe there's not a way to figure something out.'
Summer clerkships offset the drudgery of law school, and a housesitting gig in Tacoma provided free lodging plus the opportunity to volunteer with Pacific Lutheran softball in her spare time. A relationship meanwhile began with Ralph Weekly, then the Pacific Lutheran head coach, and the pair married in 1994. Soon after, Tennessee-Chattanooga offered Ralph the chance to run its nascent Division I softball program. For Karen Weekly, whose childhood vacations involved driving across the western United States and Canada in a Volkswagen bus pulling a tent trailer, this sounded like a cool adventure. And she declared they'd leave after a year if she hated it, anyway.
She did not. In less than two years, she went from a job at a Chattanooga firm to teaching a course called Legal Environment of Business and spending her down time at the softball diamond. 'When people say, you went to law school and now you don't even use that, I'm like, oh, you'd be surprised,' Weekly says now. 'Just the way you're taught to think critically and take a bunch of information and figure out, OK, what's the important stuff? And then how do you come up with a strategy based upon all this information?'
Advertisement
When Ralph Weekly temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City to act as the director of USA Softball's national teams in 1998, Karen Weekly took over the Chattanooga program solo, twice winning Southern Conference Coach of the Year honors. It wasn't pro basketball. It wasn't a long black robe and a seat inside the chamber at 1 First St. in Washington, D.C. It was, however, a convergence she long pursued: a home at the intersection of law, teaching and competition, owned exclusively by Karen Weekly.
Then Tennessee called in 2001. It aimed to hire Ralph and Karen Weekly as co-head coaches. No professorships. No moonlighting. Just softball.
'It was never about my ego, but it was like, (teaching law) is my thing,' Karen Weekly says. 'He doesn't have anything to say about it. He doesn't get to say anything about it. He doesn't know anything about it. That's mine. And now I'm going to turn my back on that and jump into what's been his world, and he's considered one of the best at it. That was kind of hard.'
The next 20 years nevertheless comprised 949 wins, 16 NCAA Tournament appearances, seven Women's College World Series berths and a new stadium built in 2008 to boot. If there was a division of household duties, so to speak, Karen Weekly leaned into instruction and player development while leaving most bigger-picture responsibilities to her husband. She was, in essence, still a teacher. Still able to do her thing, or at least a version of it she could accept. She was the substance, former Tennessee women's athletics director Joan Cronan liked to joke, to Ralph's style.
Under the circumstances, it tracked. The daughter of a generous and pragmatic father who worked for the Internal Revenue Service and a mother who wore a suit of armor over a devastating diagnosis. The attorney trained to parse details and win arguments. The co-head coach who didn't mind calling pitches behind a dugout fence. Karen Weekly might've been comfortable wrapped in some armor, too, even if it kept as much in as it kept out.
Then something didn't feel quite right anymore. Not for a couple seasons before Ralph retired at age 78 in 2021. 'I was kind of disenchanted,' she says now. Seasons ended without personal fulfillment. Unease lingered even in 2022, when Karen Weekly first occupied the top of the Lady Vols org chart by herself. 'I don't want to say she was trying to feel it out – but you could just tell it was different to her,' says outfielder Katie Taylor, a freshman on that squad. When Tennessee was eliminated as a regional host for the second straight year in '22, Weekly was sure the school wouldn't stand for much more of that.
That thought brought her back to Tacoma, and the reason she stayed at a house 40 miles from law school classes so she could hang around a softball field for nothing.
'It made me think, how do I want to coach?' Weekly says. 'And 2023 was probably the first year I really, truly was like, we are going to be joyful. If this is it, I want everybody in this program to feel like they enjoyed their experience this year.'
A Pop-A-Shot machine has appeared on the sideline of the indoor field at the Anderson Training Center. The theory is that football renovations forced its temporary relocation. Tennessee's softball team, also relocated to this space due to heavy rains, cannot resist its lure. As the start of practice nears, two Lady Vols grab mini-basketballs. They retreat to a spot a good 15 yards from the rims. They are set to launch. But they can't.
Advertisement
The head coach is shooting.
Four days earlier, Tennessee began the SEC tournament with a double-bye into the quarterfinals. It ended the SEC tournament there, too, blowing up late in a 6-1 loss to Arkansas. That made it five losses in eight games for a team that spent a week ranked No. 1 in the country in April. And a day after the NCAA Tournament bracket is revealed, there is a one-woman singalong to 'Purple Rain' courtesy of center fielder Kinsey Fiedler during hitting groups. There is a debate about the difference in pickle flavor before a team meeting. There is a Hall of Fame coach getting (tiny) buckets before practice and, by the end of live defense and baserunning reps, freshman Amayah Doyle jumping and screaming in front of All-SEC catcher Sophia Nugent, who can't keep a straight face as she threatens retribution.
'If everyone's uptight and worried about failing, it just creates a lot of stress and a lot of pressure that we don't need,' says All-American Taylor Pannell, who leads the Lady Vols in OPS (1.269) and RBIs (62). 'We're playing free. And it's just way more fun to be here.'
To be clear, a program that has hosted 20 consecutive NCAA Tournament regionals does not run on laughing gas. There is prudence, juris- or otherwise, in Tennessee's bones.
Practice revolves around class schedules, not vice versa. The Lady Vols are also an unofficial book club, reading selected motivational texts and sharing reflections in small groups and with the team as a whole. ('The Twin Thieves' is the current selection.) They've watched Kobe Bryant clips to provide a north star for ruthlessness on the playing field. BEST, MOST AGGRESSIVE SELF is painted on one wall of the batting cages.
When the leadership council established team rules for the 2024-25 cycle, the head coach lawyered the verbiage. 'She's like, 'Well, you can't have a gray area, because what about this? You have to think about this. How do you phrase that?'' Fiedler recalls. Conversations with Weekly aren't cross-examinations, but they can involve a lot of questions. 'I feel like with lawyers, they're always going to find a way to get what they want,' Taylor says. And what should annoy a self-described rule-follower — that softball action, sometimes, resembles downed power wires thrashing about in a hurricane — is in fact what the former attorney at the top loves the most about the game: an endless cascade of problems to solve.
'She loves when things go wrong,' senior McKenna Gibson says. 'It actually brings me more sanity because I know that if our head coach isn't stressed about something that's going on, then there's no need for the player to, I guess?'
Advertisement
Still, this latest trip to a Super Regional series with Nebraska is inarguably part of a rebalancing act. 'I never, ever thought you'd hear me say, 'We need to have fun,'' Weekly says now. The first manifestation of it, or at least the one veteran Lady Vols remember, is Weekly's reaction to a seven-run sixth inning and a comeback win over Florida in April 2023. Following a quick chat with her staff, she balls her fists and screams as she gallops full-speed into the middle of a mosh pit of players.
Having caught her breath, Weekly then tells her team she'll be smiling all night long.
A fad, it was not. The coach who once frowned upon loony home run celebrations is OK with players donning a 'Mommy' hat and strutting in the dugout through a storm of fake money. In the team meeting at the top of NCAA Tournament week, Weekly rolls a montage of the Lady Vols hollering and smiling and acting generally unhinged during games. 'It just screams, 'We're doing this because we get to do this,'' Weekly says from the side of the screen. She has referred to her job as C.R.O. — Chief Reminding Officer — and the concept of feeling excitement and joy, no matter the result, is crucial for a team that had six freshmen and sophomores in the starting lineup of a regional final win over Ohio State.
'She says this a lot: She'd rather say 'whoa' than 'go,'' Fiedler says.
It's the ethos that unlocked a paradigm-shifter in the circle.
In January, on a conference room wall that's essentially a giant whiteboard, each Tennessee player illustrated what qualities they wanted to bring to the season. Karlyn Pickens drew a flame. Around it, she wrote 'Fire & PASSION.' For someone who has pitched since she was 8 years old, who probably could've been a Division I athlete in three sports, the spark hadn't come as naturally as one might expect. 'I had those moments in high school and travel ball where I would get pumped up, but when I got to college, it was kind of an adjustment period of like, 'Wow, these hitters are the best in the country,'' Pickens says. 'Not that I wasn't confident. But I was still kind of figuring (it) out.'
As a freshman, the Lady Vols' 6-foot-1 phenom was all muted body language. A strikeout might get a fist pump. Maybe. So Pickens had a talk with her head coach, who assured Pickens there was nothing wrong with celebrating how much she loved playing.
Advertisement
'She flipped the switch on perspective,' Weekly says, 'and you see what you have now.'
It's cumulatively 44 wins, a 1.01 ERA and 477 strikeouts in 374 ⅔ innings (and counting) over the last two seasons, both of which ended with Pickens as the SEC pitcher of the year. Game day texts from her father, Phillip, almost inevitably focus on joy and energy and ferocity and, these days, nearly every whiff is followed by Pickens leaving her feet and screaming. The walls are down. Any invisible weight is dropped. There is a straight line between that and what transpired on March 24, in the sixth inning of a game against Arkansas, when Pickens slung a 1-1 fastball across the plate at 78.2 miles per hour.
No one, ever, has thrown a softball faster.
KARLYN PICKENS SETS THE RECORD FOR THE FASTEST PITCH IN COLLEGE SOFTBALL HISTORY 🔥🤯 78.2 MPH#NCAASoftball x 🎥 SECN / @Vol_Softball pic.twitter.com/nYa9OnxRcV
— NCAA Softball (@NCAASoftball) March 25, 2025
'When I realized that I didn't have to please other people, that I could just go and do my thing,' Pickens says, 'it made me 10 times a better athlete, and I think that was a turning point for my confidence.'
Should a return to the Women's College World Series manifest, the genesis of all that heat merits as much attention as the heat itself. You never know, though. Someone eventually will hit 80 miles per hour. And Karlyn Pickens doesn't rule out being that someone. 'I won't say no,' is her official stance, and she's smiling when she says it.
Few people would stand in more profound awe of Pat Summitt than a former basketball nut who coached anything at Tennessee. So it was with Karen Weekly. And so it was that she and her husband all but sprinted to Summitt's office after the legendary hoops coach asked them to visit a couple years into their tenure. She shared an observation: When Lady Vols softball players circled up, they weren't touching. Physical connection is important, Summitt said. It's why her teams touched feet in huddles.
And there was Tennessee softball in a circle after practice, three days before the 2025 NCAA Tournament, standing cleat-to-cleat.
Advertisement
And there was Karen Weekly, addressing the team with 1,122 wins at Tennessee to that point. More than any coach has amassed there, in any sport, Pat Summitt (1,098) included.
This comes up in her office a few minutes later. Karen Weekly reacts like someone shoved a knife into her rib cage.
'Please, please, no — please don't even talk about that,' she says. 'I know it bothers my boss. She's like, 'No, but you have accomplished lots.' OK, yeah, but it's still apples and oranges. We're not coaching the same sport. If Pat had 56 to 70 opportunities to win every year, she'd have set a number here that nobody would ever touch.'
But Weekly and Tennessee are there, and beyond. And they might not be, at least not together, without a choice she made a few years back. A choice that heeded four words near the bottom of a list showcased in a conference room next to an outsize image of her idol.
It's Pat Summitt's 'Definite Dozen' system of success. The 11th entry is as follows:
Change is a must.
'If I'm going to try to convince my kids to surrender the outcome and to compete with joy,' Weekly says, 'they needed to see me doing it, not just talking about it.'
Not long ago, Karen Weekly bought herself a Porsche. She'd promised herself one for a while, because she likes to go fast. But she never followed through. The urge hit the speed bump of practicality. Now, though, she is the proud owner of a yellow two-seater with merely 1,200 miles on the odometer.
She didn't have to have it. But she gets to.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Courtesy of the University of Tennessee)
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Fox News
7 minutes ago
- Fox News
With World Cup exactly 1 year out, USMNT legends say pressure is turned up a notch
The United States Men's National Soccer Team will be the home squad in next year's World Cup, and they could make a big splash. Eleven of the 16 host stadiums in next year's tournament, which begins exactly one year from Wednesday, are in the United States, with New Jersey's MetLife Stadium hosting the final. After 1994, Major League Soccer was born, and it goes without saying that the immediate rise of soccer's popularity in the country was exponential. But it's seemingly hit a wall in recent years as the USMNT hasn't exactly given Americans a chance to grasp on. The squad got into the Round of 16 in 2010 and 2014 but failed to even qualify for the tournament in 2018. The USMNT returned to the Round of 16 three years ago but couldn't get out of the Copa América group stage on their own home soil last year. Team USA legend Landon Donovan, though, feels that soccer is "secure" in the country, even if Team USA disappoints, and its popularity can only go up from here. "There's going to be a lot of pressure, for sure, on this team. You play a World Cup in front of your home crowd, there's certainly going to be pressure. Is the state of soccer in trouble if they don't do well? No," Donovan said in a conference call with reporters this week. "There is a massive, massive opportunity [for this team]. In my experiences from the '02 World Cup, when we did really well, my life changed, and the trajectory of USA Soccer changed a little bit." But then again, Donovan scored one of the most famous goals in United States soccer history: his goal in stoppage time against Algeria put the U.S. through the group stage for the first time since 2002. "In 2010, it was that on steroids when we had an iconic moment. So if this team can do one of two things, either go far and/or have an iconic moment or two, it will catapult soccer through the roof in this country." Alex Lasry, the CEO of the NYNJ Host Committee, offered similar sentiments, saying the global stars coming to the United States will be enough to grow the sport itself. "If it ends up being not what we're hoping, I don't think that's going to dampen what the World Cup means to the United States," Lasry told Fox News Digital at Jersey City's Liberty State Park, which is the home of the official 2026 World Cup fan festival and hosted a one-year countdown launch party on Wednesday. "I don't think it's going to dampen how that 6-, 7-, 8-year-old looks at it. Having [Lionel] Messi, [Kylian] Mbappe, [Cristiano] Ronaldo, [Christian] Pulisic, the stars of the sport here, is what's going to lead to that next generation of athletes saying, 'I want to be a part of that.'" Fellow USMNT alum Alexi Lalas took the other side of the coin. While agreeing with Donovan in that all it takes is one special moment to get the country latched on, he said he isn't letting this squad "off the hook." "This is a generation that, over the last 30-plus years, everybody has worked to make sure that they have everything they possibly need in terms of the opportunities and the resources they have; and with that comes higher expectations and fair expectations," Lalas said. "Whoever is ultimately on that field next summer, I hope they recognize the opportunity and responsibility to further the game. What [does that look] like? It can come in a lot of different forms. But when that final whistle blows for the U.S. team, you want to leave thinking, 'That was something I'm going to remember. That made me proud to not just be a soccer fan in the United States, but to be an American.'" "You've got to be ready for that and embrace that opportunity with both hands and make the most of it," he said. "I don't want to let them off the hook, because I think they can do things we haven't seen before. They need the soccer gods to smile, but every team in the World Cup needs a little bit of luck going forward. And over the next year, they're going to have to work at what's going on, and I think the attitude off the field, to make sure they maximize next summer." The 2026 FIFA World Cup takes place in North America next year and will be featured on FOX Sports. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.


CBS News
8 minutes ago
- CBS News
Oakmont's "magnificent" and "relentless" traits define why it's meant to host the U.S. Open
Collin Morikawa says he has the "game to win" the U.S. Open Collin Morikawa says he has the "game to win" the U.S. Open Collin Morikawa says he has the "game to win" the U.S. Open As the best golfers in the world are set to tee off for the 125th playing of the U.S. Open, Oakmont Country Club is being heralded for its "magnificent" and "relentless" traits that make it meant to host America's national championship. Oakmont is hosting the U.S. Open for a record 10th time this week and will certainly prove a difficult test for a field of players packed with talent. Giants in the game of golf have won the U.S. Open at Oakmont. Names like Nicklaus, Hogan, Els, Cabrera, and Johnson. "It's important where players win their U.S. Open, men or women, and the ghosts of the past matter," said USGA Chief Championships Officer John Bodenhamer. Bodenhamer said that Oakmont is one of the great places in the game of golf and its relentless setup makes the club a great host for the U.S. Open. Shane Lowry hits a wedge shot out of thick rough while playing the 17th hole at Oakmont Country Club on June 10th, 2025 during a practice round ahead of the 125th playing of the U.S. Open Championship. Mike Darnay / KDKA "There's no letup," Bodenhamer said. "It's a grind. There are limited opportunities to catch up once you get behind." Bodenhamer spoke at length Wednesday about the number of reasons Oakmont is so special, focusing heavily on the toughness and culture of the course and the club. "It's not just the toughness of the golf course," Bodenhamer said. "It's the culture of this club. They want it to be tough." And tough it's going to be this week. Firm and fast fairways and greens, deep bunkers, and thick rough will all contribute to a test of physical and mental toughness for those looking to add their name to golf's history books. If the fairways, greens, bunkers, and rough don't make things difficult enough, then there's the ditches. Oh yeah, the ditches. The 10th hole at Oakmont Country Club presents a number of challenges including a fairway that slopes downhill, a tilting and sloping green, and a ditch that cuts across the middle of the fairway. Mike Darnay / KDKA "Where have you gone where you've seen a U.S. Open, let alone a major championship, where they have ditches, strategic ditches?" Bodenhamer said. "I never have been to one, but Oakmont has them, and it's magnificent. Bodenhamer said Oakmont is the kind of place where you can stand on the first tee box and just feel like you're in a place where the U.S. Open is meant to be played. "It's just a magnificent place, and we're honored to be here at the 125th U.S. Open," Bodenhamer said. COMPLETE U.S. OPEN COVERAGE:


Fox News
9 minutes ago
- Fox News
Tyler Adams says USMNT not concerned with 'outside noise' from former players
Tyler Adams says the U.S. soccer team has tuned out criticism from former players. Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey, who share the American goals record with 57 each, are among those who have been critical of current regulars not in the struggling roster preparing for the CONCACAF Gold Cup. "We don't talk about that internally as a group," Adams said Wednesday during a Zoom interview with The Associated Press. "The noise on the outside is the noise on the outside. I think we need to focus on what we need to do as a group and continue to build." [RELATED: Landon Donovan, Christian Pulisic, and the drama over USMNT stars not playing] Star Christian Pulisic is skipping the June camp and Gold Cup to rest after playing about 120 games for club and country over two seasons. "Whether it was Gold Cup, whether it was Copa (America), whether it was Confederations Cup, whether it was the World Cup, I wasn't going to miss competitions," Dempsey said last week on the "Men in Blazers" podcast. "For me, I don't understand it because that wasn't my mentality. I always wanted to play in those games." Watching Portugal celebrate its win over Spain in Sunday's European Nations League final, Donovan said on the Fox postgame show: "I can't help but think about our guys on vacation not wanting to play in Gold Cup." Pulisic has not spoken publicly of his decision. The U.S. has lost four straight games, its longest skid since 2007, following a 4-0 rout Tuesday night by Switzerland. "This is part of the process," Adams said. "You're going to win games. You're going to lose games. It's about continuing to build that. I think we're on the right path. We have to continue to build and try the things that we've been training. It'll take a little bit of time, but it will come together." Adams didn't dress for the Switzerland friendly but is confident he will be ready for the Gold Cup, where the Americans open Sunday against Trinidad and Tobago. "A little turf toe-type injury. More of an overuse thing probably than anything — overload. It was something that I picked up when I came into camp," Adams said. "Progressing well right now, but just trying to be smart and manage it." Adams, who captained the U.S. at the 2022 World Cup, funded a pair of mini-pitches at Pulaski Park in Poughkeepsie, New York, near his home in Wappinger. He spoke on the Zoom about his work with Allstate, the U.S. Soccer Foundation and Black Star Soccer to construct fields about the size of basketball courts at the Fisher Magnet Upper Academy in Detroit and The Bell Avenue School in Yeadon, Pennsylvania. "Before the World Cup hopefully we plan to do one more with a city unnamed yet," Adams said. "It's something that I think has real impact, continues to grow the sport, serves underserved communities." [RELATED: Projecting the USMNT's World Cup squad: Luna over Reyna? Turner starts at GK?] Now 26, Adams is feeling back to his old self. He had back surgery last July with Dr. Robert Watkins and returned to the field with England's Bournemouth on Oct. 26. Adams played in 28 Premier League matches this season after being limited to three in 2023-24 because of leg injuries. "It's definitely enjoyable when you're healthy," he said. "The 16-to-18 months that it was just on and off inconsistency is something I never had in my career and never had to battle. And then when it hits you and you go through that, you just learn different ways to navigate things, enjoy life, just not take things for granted, all the little things." Since Mauricio Pochettino took over as U.S. coach last fall, players have had more autonomy to break away from rigid positioning employed by his predecessor, Gregg Berhalter. "From a positional standpoint, obviously we had probably a little bit of a different structure under Gregg," Adams said. "Maurizio gives the players freedom to find spots they're comfortable in and see how they can affect the game in different ways. I think our attacking players definitely have freedom to try and find the ball and create things in the right areas of the field. So, yeah, I think he gives everyone freedom, but there's still structure to the way that we want to play." Adams will be with the U.S. team in Austin, Texas, next Wednesday, and following intently when the Premier League releases its 2025-26 schedule at 3 a.m. CDT. He feels improved because of his time with Leeds in 2022-23 and Bournemouth the past two seasons. "After you play in the Premier League, every game feels slow,'" he said. "No matter what game I play in now the game feels slow. You look at your schedule when the season comes out and you have to play in a row Arsenal, Tottenham, Man City, Liverpool, Manchester United, all these big games back to back to back you just learn how to make decisions quicker and if you don't, you get punished." Reporting by The Associated Press. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!