Saturday, March 15, 2008

I just have to smile and let it go....

What a circus this Alberta Open has become. I was hoping to find some real positives for all teams that are here but that is so hard with the way things have been structured. The only teams that are happy with the schedule are Calgary and LA, check the Alberta website and you will see why. They have breaks and recovery time for their teams, always. That is what we have been accustomed to at this event for the past decade but no more.

We have lost of players making huge improvements, great leaps in play and confidence. Dani Parrington has turned a big corner with her play and will get lots of reps at Youth Nationals now that she is a Cadet leader. Andrew Bredin has really improved at the Cadet level after a few games as a Youth here and is steady as a much more mature veteran. The Bantam Girls have kept improving in big ways even if they are too fatigued with multi-team play to win as much as they want. Atoms keep improving during games and that is what we want to see with that age.

Our Cadet Boys has 2 easy wins today and it was a shame we couldn't have played one of yesterdays team sin a 2-game-day setting like today. Youth Boys were on their way to pushing Calgary to the limit when the Calgary coach lost his cool and started yelling aggressively and with enough anger to force the naive American referee to completely change what he was calling. Too bad because it could have been the best game of the day if the Calgary team had been forced to improve their play rather than have referees change what was called for each team.

Since I don't want my blog to be too negative I will just leave it at that and say that we are talking to lots of other coaches about Alberta Open alternatives for next season.


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