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.