Cadet Girls at NationalsI like the girls in the picture above; every one of them has a quality I respect and admire. Unfortunately I think a few adults from outside our club are going to poison their water polo futures and prevent them ever playing together again.
Bringing 2 groups together, a purely social club like Neptunes and an obviously competitive one like Bushido, is very hard to do. It was obvious from nationals how little these girls have trained together and how unfamiliar competition stress was to the Neptune crew. I took some learning opportunities away from Bushido Bantam and Cadet girls in favour of players with more years in the sport but these girls had practice experience not game experience. The doubt and insecurity I created with Bushido players I have known for years was not something I anticipated hanging around this long into the season.
Hopefully everyone can see now that I did not work with the Neptunes to "strengthen" our 2008 teams. It was an effort purely to bridge gaps, mend fences and provide a framework for the future. Our team performance for women has actually been hurt with this effort. That is not to say we prevented a top 5 performance had we played with a pure Bushido team, we just messed with team identity. So, I am hoping people now understand why the High Performance program in 2008-09 will be a Bushido club one and not a hybrid that blends coaches and athletes a couple of times per week from different training environments.
Maybe some Neptune players will be allowed to join that HP training group, some likely won't. But if their parents are more concerned about not "betraying" old club friendships by joining Bushido then we know what that says about how committed they are to Social Sport vs High Performance sport. They've had 25 years to initiate HP water polo and so far, no sign of it. Either way, we have shown how positive our teams, athletes, coaches and training environment are so that is not the obstacle to success.
No comments:
Post a Comment