I have outlined lots of external pressures that contribute to struggles of our teams so now I will turn the light on to the players themselves. What I am about to write is not criticism, it is observation. Some of the things I struggle with as a coach involve knowing what I can change in athlete focus ie what is coachable, and what I have to move beyond and look elsewhere for.High Performance sport is not well understood by many in our community. High Performance "anything" is not well understood; it goes against much of what North American society is teaching, marketing or supporting. This makes it hard for me to get players to understand that sport performance at a high level requires personal commitment to high level performance in many things. For example, diet and lifestyle, 2 things I constantly talk to players about. How can you expect an engine to perform its best when the fuel it consumes is low quality? You can't. How can a peak performance be called up on demand if the mental skill to focus has never been developed or is cheated by lack of sleep? It can't.
Players need to understand that coming to practice 75% of the time will result in less than 75% of the performance they want in games. Players that coast through 75% of practice, half effort in swim sets or drills, will have less than 75% performance when it's needed. Players who don't get proper nutrition before and after training will not get the most out of the workload they welcome in practice. If you don't do everything you can to prepare then you won't find the personal strength to outperform an opponent who HAS done everything to prepare. That's simple and it explains the 4th quarter losses at nationals to Fraser Valley, Calgary and York (Cadet Girls), York (Youth Women), DDO2 (Youth Men) and Regina & Calgary (Cadet Boys). Sure, lack of practice was part of it but did we make the best of what was available? No, not even close, and that will change for 2008-09 - even if it means smaller rosters of harder workers.
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