It has been a very, very long time since we returned from the Alberta Open without a medal for one of our teams. Some years we return with buses full of 100% of our players wearing medals; not this time. Did we all of a sudden forget to teach skills or recruit the right players? No. Did something change with the hosting, scheduling and competition itself? Yes.
First of all, our Cadet teams both finished 5th. That means of the 9 entries they were the best teams not playing for a medal on Sunday. Can that be explained? Sure, here goes. The experimental grouping placed our teams with a developmental team from Neptunes and a transitional (from developmental to HP) team from Regina. The other 2 divisions of 3 teams each were stronger than the division we were in and the format had teams only playing the 6 teams outside their division. So, we did not all face opponents of the same strength and the final rankings, after 6 games each, were not based on common opponents. As a result only the Cadet boys final was close, all other Cadet medal games were lopsided with opponents not being matched according to their strength. Also recognize that playing our first 2 Cadet Girls games in the small recreational pool was a complete joke preventing us from being ready for a switch to the big pool mid-day on Friday to face a hard swimming Valley team.
Our Bantam teams played all their games in a small pool, as small as the space we play the 5 vs 5 event in January. This meant the skill level of the players was hampered; all players crowded centre so there was very little ability to use the 2m position and that is the basis of our boys team, by far. Our girls are strong in the 2m department too and their explosive driving had nowhere to go. By Sunday the girls had figured out how to more quickly move the ball in transition and they exploded much more on the counter so they flipped an 11-4 loss to an Alberta All-star team into a 7-3 win over the same squad. The team that finished 4th had beaten them on Friday as the 5th game of the day for half our team (2 Bantam, 3 Cadet games) and immediately after the Cadets had just finished their 3rd game. So the girls should have been playing for a medal if the schedule had been developed to allow teams to recover and perform over a balanced 4 day cycle.
The Atom team may have finished where they belonged since that division has a high up & down performance factor for all but the most experienced teams. There was certainly improvement over the weekend but Mackenzie being too sick to play most of the event hurt us. And, no player was hindered more by the small pool size than Natalie who could not find space to use her speed as one of the 5 fastest girls in Canada.
Youth teams were a curiousity. I am not sure how the boys lost to Fraser Valley 2 but after leading 9-8 at half and then losing 1-6 in the second half suggests fatigue. I guess having the Cadet/Youth boys (Carson, Mike, Alex, Andrew) play 5 times on Thursday and then a Cadet game before the FV2 Youth game on Friday can be identified as part of the problem. Their Storm loss was simply a result of a 1 hour rest after their hard swimming game earlier that day vs FV1. Why did we have 2 games with a one hour break and nothing else all day? Simply a lack of concern for visiting teams.
Youth Women need their own paragraph here. I can tell you they were not the 4th best team, that is for sure. In the bronze medal game that shows us losing by 1 (7-6 to Calgary A) we had a goal ignored in the first half. Our big centre forward, Heather, scored a backhand that went into the net and out again so quickly the referees did not see. That was possible because the goals we played with were only a foot deep and sat so close to the bulkhead that the rebound out was extremely fast. You would think that having 2 Calgary referees working that game would have had them used to the rebound out of the net. I'll let you figure out why there were 2 refs from the same club as we were playing. The other difference in scoring came when the referees allowed a free throw inside 5m (at 4m actually) to be shot at net and score. So, it was actually a 7-6 Bushido win but having the medal from the event was much more important to Calgary than to us, we will focus on a medal at the end of the year, not the middle. In our earlier games vs Storm and Calgary we played many players, some of whom were very tired, so only our match with LA was close to a test of our real strength prior to the final. That game was a 2 goal loss, 10-8, and was close for the duration.
None of that is sour grapes; I'm just explaining to those who were not there or who don't have the technical background to know the factors altering team play. I am quite at ease with the standings as I could not care less about winning at this huge event with so much player overlap on rosters. I was interested in judging our training and testing our work thus far in 2008 and that was possible to some extent. We will just make note of how this major event has degenerated as a regional or international event and accept that it is now an Alberta showcase for their regional teams to come to Calgary and get some games vs teams they will never travel to see in their own cities. Maybe in 2009 some of those teams will return. For us we are looking at alternatives and I had many discussions along those lines with other coaches during the weekend.
Coming up later this week, adding a team of sport psychologists and why
No comments:
Post a Comment