National Team 2013 - Phase 2 - Pre-Departure

Well here it is the afternoon before we depart for Russia. We leave tonight at 7:30 from Campus.

I haven't blogged throughout this phase for 2 reasons. It is an extremely busy schedule when I am planning all of the practices and trying to get the team ready so I haven't had a lot of time to blog plus I think this part would be really boring. There is only so much practice people would want to hear about and since we have eaten chicken and rice for over 80% of our meals I didn't think that would be interesting to chat about. I will certainly try to blog every day during the Russian experience.

Our training camp went OK but we ran into some snags along the way. We only had 15 people to start the camp. We found out one of our good guards had mono and she went home. Down to 14. We cut one player who was not ready for this level and came into camp WAY out of shape. Down to 13. After another day we cut two more who weren't ready. Down to 11. One injured her ankle so for most of the camp we had 10. Not the best training environment and at times frustrating but we forged ahead. We have 11 players currently on the roster. It will be interesting to see how we handle the tournament.

We start play on the 7th I believe but I am not 100% sure. We play Japan, Taiwan and the Ukraine in our pool and we are working to set up exhibition scrimmages vs. Australia, Brazil and the U.S. Should be a great test. I feel if we play well we could get out of the pool but we will see. We aren't the most highly talented scoring team so hopefully we score "by committee" and play good defense.

So now it is on to Russia. Cross another country off the list. Am I excited? Honestly not yet. I am actually feeling a touch nervous about whether or not I have prepared the group well enough for the games. To me we are on a business trip and there are so many distractions that can happen at a big event like these. Having been to a FISU games, I know the environment is NUTS. Plus we have no idea of the sleeping arrangements, how the food will be, how is the transportation, etc. A lot of questions to be answered yet. However, I am excited to be leading a national team into a tournament like this. A great challenge as a coach.

Our flight tonight leaves around 10:30 and we fly directly to Istanbul, Turkey (11 hours). I believe that we have a 7 hour layover then we fly for almost 4 hours to Kazan, Russia and we arrive at something like 2AM. Almost 24 hours of travel. Never fun but hopefully I will get some sleep on the plane.

If I was keeping score, since May 18 or so I have been in Czech, Serbia, Germany, France, Turkey and Russia. That's a pile of passport stamps.

So off we go. Some last minute packing to do. I will try and update as time and internet access permit. Hopefully we will have some interesting tales along the way.

Until then......