Assessment Camp

Here is a long overdue post (about a month late), that I wrote without wifi access after our first day of our assessment and selection camp held in March.

Opening day of camps are typically filled with off court activities, and is a travel day more than anything. With this many athletes and coaches coming together for "just" a weekend,  it is not surprising when we run into a travel hitch or two.  The biggest things for coaches and athletes (and managers) when these things happen is to remember to control the controllables.  Delays, cancellations, etc. can be very frustrating but are out of our control.  If nothing else they provide a great test to our mental toughness and intestinal fortitude.  

We did run into a few hitches today.  For the athletes who experienced them we just reiterated that we control the controllables and that they will not be penalized for missing things because of this.  Going into an assessment camp these athletes are nervous enough, to run into these extra stressors can be mentally tiring.  We will work as a staff to make sure the athletes are ready to demonstrate their best on court following their delayed arrivals. 

After a group dinner, we held a meeting to review expectations and guidelines for the weekend.  I, personally, prefer not to use the word "rule", as these athletes are young, mature women who should know how to conduct themselves responsibly. We reiterated that they aren't just being evaluated on court but how they represent themselves in every scenario throughout the weekend. 

Lastly, we reminded the girls that they are vying for a position to represent their country at an international competition.  When I was flying to Toronto today, I started to think about that exact thing and it gave me goosebumps and filled me with excitement. It is so special for me to have a profession that allows me these opportunities.  I am sure the girls are feeling similar emotions and will give their all on and off the court this weekend.  

We are going to have a great weekend!

I had hoped to update this blog regularly over the course of that weekend, but we had so many different things to cram into just three days and updating the blog fell pretty far down my priority list.  We were essentially on the go from 7:00am to 11pm, so when it was time to shut 'er down it did not take long to crash and get some much desired sleep.

We had a great camp and our excited with our group of 16 we have moving forward and preparing together for the World Championships.  We now have a plan in place to communicate and monitor each individual as they train and prepare for when we reconvene at the end of July.  I will continue to give you some more regular updates on exactly what this entails and how things are going!

Exciting times are ahead!

8 Days Until Camp

We are now just over a week until we reconvene for this year's assessment camp held March 22-26.  I was fortunate to spend two days in Truro, NS with Michael MacKay and Denise Dignard to plan the majority of the camp.  Since we met at the beginning of the month I have been putting the complete plan together and communicating with Canada Basketball to ensure all the pieces are in place.

Aside from a couple of injuries to the athlete's attending, everything seems set to go. With six training sessions in just three days it is important that we take the time ahead of the camp to plan the majority of what will take place.  It is a very short amount of time to cover a lot of material and appropriately evaluate the athletes.  I think we have a great plan in place to maximize our time both on and off the court.

Now our plan will likely be altered several times as we progress through the weekend but it is important to have things in place.  Our goal is to implement key offensive and defensive concepts, and spend some time breaking down the skills for both of these in the mornings.  In the evening we will put the pieces together and compete while coaching more on the fly.  It will be interesting to see how the concepts and ideas we have developed so far will fit with the skill sets we think we have, or what we might end up altering after the weekend.

Through today's technology, Dropbox in particular, we have been able to share some video content with the athlete's that demonstrates some individual drills and skills for them to help appropriately prepare themselves.  I hope that we an utilize the same technology for tracking the selected athletes between now and our pre-World Championship training camp in August!

If time permits, I will update you as our camp progresses next weekend.

Planning for the World Championships

I apologize as I had intended on keeping up with posts regularly throughout our cadet team "off season" however, there was not a lot to update on. We are often well intentioned, but the grinds of the season we become immersed in often take over and it is difficult to get out of the present moment.  Our coaching staff is very much getting back in cadet team mode now!

My season with our team at UPEI has concluded and now it is time to prepare for our upcoming selection and ID camp to be held March 22-26. We are very excited to have lots of talented players coming into camp in March, and expect a very competitive camp. It is exciting to have so many young players aspiring to compete for their country.

A couple of weeks ago we received our draw for the World Championships to be held in Holland, which began to make things very real. The Championships will be a 12 team tournament, and we have been placed in a group with: Italy, USA, Belgium, Mali, and South Korea.  We will play these 5 teams in this order, then from there it will depend on our results through the first round robin.  On the other side of the draw is: Brazil, Australia, Japan, Turkey, Spain, and the Netherlands.

Our plan for preparing for the championships is still in progress beyond our upcoming March camp, but we are hopeful that we will have some exhibition play in Europe prior to competing in the Netherlands. Due to the vastness of our country, as always it will be near impossible for our group to train together regularly before August so we will have our coaches monitoring athletes to some extent throughout the spring and summer to attempt to maximize their preparation for the championships.

I am meeting with Canada Basketball this week to further articulate our plan for the next 6 months with hopes of reaching new heights with our Canadian team at the U17 World Championships.

Long Distance Coaching

As the summer quickly ended and the new school year began, the "regular" roles of our Cadet team coaching staff have also started. I think if we all had a preference we would move all our potential cadet team World Championship athletes to a localized area for the year and train together. Unfortunately the size of our country, and the fact that our coaching staff has full time jobs makes that is a little difficult (thankfully we are teachers and full time coaches of other teams - so we are able to escape and enjoy the privilege of coaching the cadet team).

My goal with this blog is to post relatively regularly on our happenings during our cadet team "off season"...hopefully about once a month, to provide some insight on how we try to keep the program and our athletes operating from a distance.

After the National Championships (held in Winnipeg) ended in August, where we were able to complete further player evaluation, we have been working on a plan to regularly communicate, monitor and have our athletes progress in preparation for the World Championships next summer. Not the easiest task when most of us are several miles apart.

Thankfully, technology these days will hopefully make this easier and help us to shrink the country a little bit. First, our coaching staff has been able to connect via - phone, email, text, bbm, conference call, skype, etc...and with the availability to share video and other content on several different internet sites and programs we hope to be able to provide athletes with video examples of what we would like them to be working on, as well as have them return video of them performing specific tasks. The only difficulty with this is getting the video recorded and set up (who, when and where will this be done). We also hope to regularly communicate with on site coaches who get to work with the athletes on a day to day basis, and provide the athletes with an appropriate physical training program to aid their development in areas other than just basketball skill.

If things work out as we hope, our next training camp leading up to the World's will be around Christmas time which should provide a great in person progress report on the athlete's development in addition to what we will receive .

As we continue to work I will keep you posted!

Bronze Medal Game vs Puerto Rico

This is a long overdue post to summarize our final game of the FIBA World Qualifying tournament. It is amazing how as soon as the team divides up after travel home real life starts up in full force again and the environment you were completely immersed in for 2 straight weeks gets quickly left in the dust.

Final reports have been submitted on our season, and I now finally find myself making time to write the post on our Bronze Medal victory over Puerto Rico which earned us a spot in the World Championships to be hosted in Holland next August.

We had already played Puerto Rico earlier in the tournament, and although our previous game was a hard fought and close battle, we knew our game plan needed to be very similar in order to be successful and victorious again. I think already having played Puerto Rico really helped our team in mentally preparing for this game. Throughout the tournament we struggled to find the right arousal levels going into our games - we were either too worked up or too nervous depending on the competition or the environment. Having already played Puerto Rico meant we knew what to expect, and more importantly that our athletes knew what to expect.

Following a great deal of disappointment from our Brazil game the night before, the girls deserved a lot of credit for preparing themselves to play this game, embracing the opportunity to earn a medal and a spot in the World Championships next summer.

We came out very focused and intense, locking it up on the defensive end and forcing Puerto Rico into several shot clock violations in the first quarter. Despite our stellar defensive effort, we really struggled to put the ball in the basket. Although we were dominating, our inability to finish on the offensive end didn't allow us to pull away. Further, our momentum was stalled when a Puerto Rican player fainted on the court and was down for 8-10 minutes due to low blood sugar. This also seemed to give Puerto Rico a bit of a boost and we took a narrow 3 point lead into half.

We were never phased and never panicked, and continued solid execution of our game plan in the second half. An adjustment offensively to get the ball inside more to our size advantage got us to the foul line, got us some easy scores, and extended our lead as we continued our defensive presence. In the end we pulled away and earned a sound victory.

Watching the girls enjoy the victory, do the John Wall together on the bus, receive their medals and take photos together has been one of my most memorable coaching moments to date. Not necessarily because they "won" but because of how they came together as a true team, learned to sacrifice for each other and experienced the rewards that can come from always focusing on price, unity and tenacity - three things we emphasized from day one.

Canada vs Brazil

We knew going into this game that Brazil was going to be a tough test. They have a very athletic group with one of the best players in the tournament to help run the show. Their style of play is relatively simple - playing almost all player to player defense and offensively mostly just pass and cut with X cuts in the post. But, they play tremendously well as a group and with an incredible amount of passion. One thing that differentiates the North American teams from the South American teams in this tournament is the way they cheer and play with an extra level of external emotion. For example, every time Brazil walks into the gym it is in a line as a team and they are clapping and chanting together. This energy transfers on to the court where they are constantly applauding each other and fist pumping on every good play.

With our team we have been talking a lot about unity and giving energy, but with such a short preparation time together it is hard to create a level of togetherness that Brazil exhibited. This is not to say it is not in us, but our culture isn't always as naturally passionate either (except when we are hosting the Olympics) and the Brazil team for example spent a longer time training together and getting comfortable with each other prior to the tournament. I can't emphasize how important it is for players at this level to be energy givers to allow for our team to form and gel in the limited time we typically have together.

In our game vs Brazil they came out likely a bit over-aroused for the game while we were under-aroused. We managed to keep things together at the beginning and were actually leading 4-2 early on as Brazil's over-arousal left them throwing some passes out of bounds and shots over the rim. However, their ball pressure on defense began to wear us down quite quickly and we struggled to get the ball to the areas we like to attack from. As great as we were defensively (holding a dynamic, fast-paced Brazil team to 56 points for the game), we did not click offensively. If there are any skills that are clear we need to work on as a nation after facing this pressure they are: staying and playing under stance when pressured on and off the ball, how to read, cut, attack, and use our physical strength to manage the pressure, and most importantly how to pass against aggressive defense. We continue to be world class defensively as a nation, but need to encourage our top players and athletes to improve skills constantly as their athleticism does not create the same advantages at the international level.

These things were evident to us as coaches, but also came from the girls in our debrief which is great news as we know they experienced a tremendous amount of learning throughout this game.

Most were very disappointed following the game as the loss meant we would not have a chance to play the US for gold and we would have to wait another day to officially qualify for the World Championships, but we regrouped and had a great final effort vs Puerto Rico for Bronze the next day. Post on the Bronze Medal game to come soon!

Off Day in Mexico

Yesterday was an off day for the tournament. We still had a one hour practice to use as prep for our semi-final game vs Brazil tonight, but otherwise the rest of the day of free. Prior to practice we took the morning to do a little sightseeing downtown on our way to visit a local school. The local school was unbelievable. The kids were so excited to have us there, and it was an incredibly experience for our girls as they were signing autographs and singing songs (Justin Beiber to be exact - a lot of the little girls were asking if we knew JB). This experience was amazing for our athletes. Playing basketball in another country is a very memorable experience, but there is no doubt our girls will remember this experience likely much more than anything that happens during the games.

In the afternoon after practice we took a trip to downtown Merida to do a little shopping at the market. It was a very hot day so we limited our walking around time to 45 minutes as we needed to be sure not to expend too much energy to maximize our recovery. Nonetheless, the girls had a great time and were excited to be somewhere other than the gym or the hotel. The change of scenery left them refreshed and energized for our final 2 games here.

Here is a video of some of our adventures during the day and how we made use of our downtime. Happy viewing - time to finish our prep for Brazil!