Day 4 has come and gone. Flown by. These camps seemed to fly by before but now that I am in control of the planning, it is flying by even more quickly. There doesn't seem to be enough time to get everything in.
The day started with the same 6:50 wakeup and then off to breakfast. A little sketchy this morning but good enough to start the day. We headed off to our first practice for 9am. We had some help in the gym this morning with Mike MacKay being here as well as Andy Sparks who is our junior team coach and is also the coach at U of Ottawa.
The practice went ok this morning but I didn't get a good feel for it. There were a number of things that didn't sit well with me.
First off, I had to have a quick meeting this morning with a player about being more coachable. Her body language and approach to teammates is not very good so I chatted about it. She needs to work at it. As always, when you are trying to correct a behaviour I found i was focusing much more on her early and trying to make sure she was making corrections. It took away from my focus on the rest of the group. She ended up doing slightly better in the morning practice but reverted to some old behaviours in the evening so more discussions to be had. One mistake I made is that I didn't correct her hard enough in the evening to let her know that the behaviour was not acceptable. I need to get on top of that.
But back to the practice. Some of the pieces didn't seem to fit together and then I had a miscue with one of our coaches where I kind of put her on the spot and she wasn't prepared for it. I didn't realize I did it at the time but it made her very uncomfortable. I misinterpreted something and I wanted her to have a little more control of one aspect of the practice and I put her in a bad spot. I really felt bad about it and apologized afterward. It just wasn't a great practice.
After this we went to lunch and it was OK. When we finished we had to have a quick meeting with one of the girls who was leaving camp. We gave her some feedback and hopefully she will take it back to her own training.
We had a brief coaches meeting to prep for practice and then I planned out the 2nd one. I cut it to 1.5 hours of non contact work. Basically no defense. I wanted them to focus on fundamentals. It was a little better practice because we were able to do a lot of refining. It wasn't physically intense but very good. Mike was able to come on the court and help us out a lot which was great.
After practice we went to supper and then we had our first group meeting. I decided to have a meeting to discuss where I felt we were, clean up some administrative details and to tell them that tomorrow is only one practice. We will practice in the AM and then be off until the next day.
During the meeting I asked them to discuss their favourite moments from their national team experiences. There was some great sharing. I also asked them to share a unique talent they may have. There were a few musical people but Kayla stole the show. She is a very good ballon artist. She makes animals and other things and even made a set of wings.
Earlier in the day I asked Shawnee if she would mind speaking to the team. Each one of these girls has dreams of playing in the Olympics and Shawnee has been to the Olympics as a coach. I explained to the girls that a big part of being successful, in my eyes, is having a connection to the feelings that you wish to create. I wanted them to understand the feelings that Shawnee felt in 1996. POWERFUL would be the word I would use to describe her talk. Very emotional. Some girls were moved to tears and Shawnee had to stop a few times to compose herself. The pride for Canada and Canada Basketball was busting out of her. I thought it was perfect for these girls. What a tremendously motivating moment for our group.
After our meeting I had to go to a presentation by the sport specialists who are here with us. They wanted to get feedback on the presentation that they will be giving our girls on Sunday. It was fantastic and I think the girls will get some great ideas from it.
I excused myself early and came back to my room around 9:30. The other coaches arrived around 10 and we tossed around ideas until 11 then I planned out our practice for tomorrow.
Lots and lots of learning still being done. I have learned a lot more about conducting practices and I have learned more about the different levels of decisions that I get involved in as the head coach. So much learning going on that I have to work to stay focused and to not overwhelm myself. So far so good though.
So after all that babbling it is now 12:30 and I need to get up early.
Until tomorrow
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