Symposium Comments, Day 3

I had some bad feelings at this years leadership symposium. It was, in fact, not about leadership and only 1 national coach was present. No Men's coaches even though they had just been to an historic Olympic Games, no Junior Team coaches even though club coaches were there to hear their plans. Pretty much a wash out in that respect.

There were plenty of contradictions presented to us as well. The big push in years to come is to concentrate efforts in what is referred to as MMA's (major metropolitan areas), specifically -  Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. The women's program is actually only focusing on Toronto to Montreal, nothing to the west. No mention of water polo support for the prairies or the maritimes at any level. That is consistent with past history so at least now it is being talked about openly. The funny/sad part is that there is some sort of illusion that water polo will be added to the Canada Games in future. That is odd since Water Polo Canada is shrinking the base, the provincial support, and killing all domestic competition beyond Cadet age.

I am thinking of writing a large blog on national team centralization and how it is killing women's domestic water polo while leading to slumping national team performance. That effort will take some time though since I am busy with club registration right now and getting 2008-09 going for the players who I can actually help.

Leadership Summit, Day 1

Hmmm, not sure how this is going to roll out. I had a few chances to raise points tonight, to get dialogue going in a specific direction, and that was positive.

I keep bringing up the topics of partnerships, dialogue and responsibility. It remains to be seen if this resonates with more than the few people who thanked me after the meeting for raising the points I did.

This is a very big group of people, 105 in total. Maybe 25 or so are young BC coaches so it is not a genuine cross section from Canada. But it is a good start. We'll see how Saturday goes before I have specific observations about the dialogue.

Daily Blogs Coming Soon

Hotel I will be at this weekend

As I get back into the swing of things I am starting to have meaningful things to say. Soon I will return to blogging on a daily basis. Topics I may cover are; the new designation of elite training with Bushido as the High Performance Centre; rosters and philosophy for 2008-09; why no Neptune girls will train at a high performance level; what the CSL is and how it has influenced domestic play.

This weekend I will be at a national water polo leadership summit in BC. At first I was under the impression this was to be a sharing of ideas and a coming together of ideas from all corners of the sport. I was excited by that possibility and the chance that the philosophy behind the old "Leadership Symposium" might be returning. Sadly though, I now have the agenda for the weekend and it is a not good sign. We have 2 days of meetings, much of it around Long Term Athlete Development, the NCCP and new theories in athlete development and coaching. Oddly the summit will not follow the theories underlying the NCCP and instead we will be sitting down for the whole time as people "tell us things". We won't be sharing much, just hearing what others have already decided on and want us to "rubber stamp".

You can be pretty sure I will have some things to say about the weekend. I'll have my laptop with me (as always) and may even do a blog from there if my mind is blown by something unexpected.