"Fighter Jet" taking down an Opponent

Ok, so why am I so busy and not posting daily (I have heard this from several people the past week or so)? Well, I live in a 3 story 2800 sq' house and it is 100 years old. That takes work from time to time and when I am doing that labour I am less able to tend to personal water polo issues over required job activities (practice planning and delivery, event planning etc).

So, this week at the pool I am focusing on half court drills that require teams to follow limited, specific tactical directions. The point is to get them to follow a game plan and not fall into habits of freelance play or dependency on too few.

The boys never seem to give Brendan the ball often enough when he is available at 2m. His skill there demands we feed him the ball every time he is open. This is a problem that Riley had when he was a Youth player too, it was only Jesse (and sometimes Dana Bredin or Greg Cavers) that could follow a game plan and feed the pass to Riley at 2m. Too often Adam was busy playing with the ball himself and oblivious to what the team was doing. Pizey and Ben had that problem today, too unwilling to listen to tactics and just doing what they want. That is being corrected.

The girls have a different problem. The older ones tend to want to give it to Breda and watch what happens. Any team tactic we discuss is thrown out the window as soon as the first pass goes to her. She has this solo effort reinforced at both the CSL and the Junior National Team where they build tactics around her handling the ball. That means we are working against some big obstacles to break that model but it is happening. The good thing is Breda is smart and want steam success so when things work as a group she embraces them. She never wants to do it herself, she just keeps getting put in that spot by others.

This is the sort of thing we are doing now, force a limited tactic each day, then expand the next. Without games through the season it takes much longer to learn these tactics than it would in a country with a league but we do what we can while we change the environment we work in over time.

Also this week, finally, we have the safety nets up at Pan Am during practice. I asked for this to be done, in writing, in August 2007. Why did it take the city 7 months to do this, don't ask. I will have my camera at the pool Thursday to take some Cadet Girls team shots for the Nationals Program. I will try to get some pics of the safety netting too, then post them here.