Club Under Stress

The past few blog entries have maybe sounded a bit like the sky is falling, "woe is me" sort of thing. I'll try to re-frame things a bit with this entry to keep perspective.

They are not praying, just concentrating!

Amateur sport in Canada is always operating with a level of anxiety from stress. That stress can be political, financial, lack of volunteers, poor resources etc but there is always something. What I am outlining this week is the blanket of stress that is over Bushido programs and then some solutions so those issues can be lessened and the club can thrive. We have to acknowledge obstacles before having solutions to them.

The obvious place to start when we talk of stress is with our lack of facility access in Winnipeg. I can say without much doubt that we are the best club in Canada with teams that train 3x week in a 12x20 yard space. That obstacle can only be removed with help from our PSO (Provincial Sport Organization) in a major lobby to secure more access to city pools and to protect the space that our club fought for so long to acquire. That simple problem, adequate practice space, could change everything in one short season.

How? Here are some ways;
1) more practice time ie hours, would mean more specific team practices catering to more specific athlete development stages.
2) better practice space ie 25yds with 2 end walls, this would allow multiple water polo nets in the water and many more game-like drills,
3) more practice time ie other pools, would mean more specific age group practices catering to neighbourhoods and peer groups;
4) more training hours would also mean the ability to properly follow the Long Term Athlete Development philosophy that I have been addressing piecemeal for the past decade.

That is a quick and simple overview of how pool access could help our programs. I have lobbied the city for 20 years to get better space for our sport. Those efforts in the 80's got us into Pan Am on Saturdays after closing; in the 90's they gave us access to the Pan Am Training Tank when it was off limits and then recently I managed to gain access to Prime Time space from 5:00-8:00pm. Taking it the next step requires the MWPA to support this initiative and make some bold moves. I shouldn't be fighting with the MWPA to improve training for the best athletes in the province, that's a stress that need not be there.

Imagine if Bushido secured more and better training space during a year when we have managed to arrange a 20 game prairie competition season with Team Saskatchewan and Calgary Water Polo. That would give us increased skills and fitness from practice and increased tactical knowledge from game play; all in under 12 months. That's pretty much what I am after, too bad it's so hard to get people behind that vision.