Lots to Say, be Patient

Now that I have finished an intense month of travel and competition I have quite a bit to say about competition, training and team performance. I'm going to try and be positive and non judgemental so the blog entries will be gradual and hopefully limited to simple, linear thoughts.

2008 Cadet Boys Nationals, Richmond BC
Hotel rooms with kitchenettes

First, I will say that it was a very frustrating spring to be involved in so many national championships for age group athletes that had a "elimination" format. What this meant was that every game was centred on a result standard less so than a team performance one. So, if you played well and lost by a goal your team was a "loser" and sent to a negative side of the competition bracket. This is 100% in violation of the principles being promoted by the Federal government (and Water Polo Canada) through LTAD, or Long Term Athlete Development, strategies. I don't want to discuss how that came about - the national organization promoting one philosophy of sport development but employing an opposite philosophy in competition structure. Suffice to say if leadership was strong and communication solid this would never have happened.

My preference for all of these events would have been to have small groups competing in a round robin to seed teams based on 2008 ability and not relying on 2007 championship placing. This would have allowed teams to have a strategy for developing team play, tactics and player involvement at a level that is new to a vast majority, especially at the 16& under category. Then secondary rounds could be judged on performance results that were based on teams of relative similarity and winning for some would be the obvious objective. I could write about that topic for a long time so I will stop there.

2007 Youth Girls Nationals, Richmond BC
anything familiar in the 2 pics?

I had no teams this year that were ready to win a championship medal, all of them were in the development phase, still learning how to compete. I am not too concerned about any teams placing but I am VERY concerned about some of the player and team performances based on their abilities. Only our Cadet (16& Under) Girls team has a significant number of players graduating next year, all others can return almost intact, so performance can quickly take a huge jump if teams embrace a common goal and train toward performance.

This training focus will have to be central to our 2008-09 program plans since the top 8 teams from the recent Cadet Boys Nationals all come from big centres with many seasonal game opportunities. Even Calgary, with a National Training Centre and a city league, could only make it to 9th place at this event in 2008. It's obvious that the winter games being played in Ontario the past 3 years have helped Ottawa, York, Hamilton and Scarborough all catch up with the Montreal based teams and the BC teams from the lower mainland, all of which have lots of play experience before nationals. Hopefully the Prairie plans that Team Sask and I have worked out for next year will counter that a bit and our local training intensity can be picked up with less tactical focus during the week.

My next blog will speak about team offense, sport psychology and why we can be one of the best defensive clubs in the country but have so few players that want to shoot or score.