Serbia Day 8

Well day 8 is in the books as they say. IT has been a very long and tiring day. Up at 6:55 to get to meet for breakfast at 7:20am. However the other coaches slept a little late so I headed to the meal hall by myself. Same old same old for breakfast.

Scurried back from breakfast to try and watch some video with the team. Unfortunately we are having some major technical issues and the projector didn’t want to work today. The girls had to gather around my laptop to watch which was not ideal. Might have been a bad omen.

We headed off to our game at 11:00. The arena was nice and big but very few fans are at the games. Of course I suspect many are working and many others don’t care about Canada-Japan. It was neat watching the Japanese warm up. They did a visualization exercise on the court just before warm up. Their coach came out and they all laid down on the court with their knees drawn up and their feet touching. Their left hand was placed flat on the floor and their right hand was placed on the stomach of the person next to them. The coach talked them through the exercise and then they got up to warm up. They also did some very unique stretching exercises to get ready. It all must have worked because we came out pretty flat and they pretty much had their way with us. Their whole offense is based on getting to the rim for layups or shooting threes. They did both. They hit 12 3’s in the game and defeated us 90-78. Some of those threes were NBA range and they were all shot with 2 hands. I guess it shows that anything can work if you practice it. Their defense was downright pesky and scrappy. They forced us into 31 turnovers. Nice if you are a bakery but not a basketball team. Kelsey was our 2^nd leading scorer today with 17 points. She made a few “CIS” mistakes but other than that she was ok. She did struggle a little with guarding their quickness but every one of their players was quick. Some were Ultra Quick!

So now we drive almost 2 hours tomorrow to our next gym to play Australia. I am not sure if any of you were ever in the situation but remember back to elementary school. Remember the schoolyard bully who came to you in the morning and said he was going to beat you up afterschool. The rest of the day was painful. Welcome to my night. Australia is very good and skilled. Hopefully we come ready to play.

Deb, Linda and I stayed to watch Slovakia and Australia play and then hitched the bus home. When we got here I basically had an hour to break down the game and get it ready for our video session. The coaches headed over to get ready and of course the projector wouldn’t work again. So I had to come up with another technical solution. Thank god for having a bit of technical knowledge. In the future, if I am involved again, I may bring my own setup so I know everything will work the way I need it to. We did our video session, discussed some offensive adjustments and then met with 2 of our players to discuss some things.

It was almost 9pm by then so Deb and I decided to go and grab some dinner. The meal hall was packed at that time of night. A nice meal though with chicken and beef on the menu.

Each day we decide to skip the buses to the meal hall and walk there. Let me describe the walk there. It is about 10 minutes on a stretch of newly paved road which is bordered on each side by fences with white Universiade signage covering every piece of the fence. Along most of the walk it is used to cover up the presence of a very shabby village on each side of the road. Tonight as we were walking by we could hear little children laughing and playing. I couldn’t help but think about what their future will hold. I am sure they have no knowledge of what could be out there but the odds are stacked so high against them “making it”. It is really quite sad and another reason why I love Canada. As I said yesterday I believe, we have poverty and issues but not quite like some of them here. The one thing I will say about Serbians though is that they are extremely kind and friendly and you can tell they are very proud people.

So that is pretty much Day 8. Up early tomorrow for a quick breakfast and bus ride. We will get to see another part of Serbia though so that will be interesting. After that we have a day off to regroup and then get going again.

I may have to wander over to the concert area in a bit to see the band tonight. A Serbian Nickelback cover band. Could be interesting.

Talk to you tomorrow

Coach