brief update

I've gone way too long without blogging, sorry if you are a regular reader. I have been swamped with other things and had my fill of water polo reading/writing in other areas. There are 2 events for my club teams in November, the first two weekends, so that takes some additional planning. This is an exciting time, but hectic.

Something interesting happened this week that was unusual and interesting so I want to write about that briefly. I was approached by the Head Coach of the largest swim club on the prairies and asked if I would lead his top swimmers through a practice session to give them an idea of what sorts of things water polo players do at practice. These are good swimmers, very good, all with national times and members of Canada Games teams etc. I am not going to waste any time explaining how to move forward or fast, they have a firm grasp of that!

It's interesting to think of what to teach a group of teenage swimmers who don't know water polo. These aren't California kids who have grown up doing both sports, no hybrids here. This is a carefully selected group of highly specialized individuals; for them vertical is for land, horizontal is for water. That will give me focus, I'll stay away from swimming other than to bend a few elbows on front crawl and teach direction change without a wall. Otherwise we will focus on moving with a ball, with a partner or working vertically.

Maybe I will write about how this goes once it is done, I could be surprised by what they show me. Having seen them play a bit of pretend water polo I know they are not masters of passing and shooting - an hour of instruction won't likely change that. However, they may pick up the movement more quickly than I anticipate so that will be interesting.