So Many Hours at the Pool

Today was a better day for the Girls at the pool, as expected. Dani was confident with her shot, Yahoo, finally using what she has! Jaelyn was a different person, great to see. Shae was 100% accurate when shooting at the posts, amazing when you think how small those things are. But her play, superb. Sarah W had breakaways every single counter, super, but never released to the wing to get the goalie pass and nobody ever fed her the ball to take to the net. That will be a group problem we solve but the opening is there for sure. Breda struggled a bit with referees and missed some offense that was there for her to exploit, but still, so much danger when she has that ball in her hand!

Cadet Boys played a pretty good game to begin the day and challenged the Regina Youth Team, controlling play for 3 quarters. Youth guys were a different story, no idea why they fight so hard to not play well. It's like they enjoy the struggle. Mitch could score at will vs any team but instead gets off by pulling the hat strings of some rec guy who is giving up his Sunday to provide game experience for our talented age group teams. So hard to understand.

It was nice to see the boys play an entire day without my hearing them swear at each other, themselves or the space around them. Maybe having the Regina boys around helped that, it couldn't hurt as they were pretty good at fitting in and following game plans.

Finally heard back from Turbo Canada today, boys suits and robes will be ordered this week. Black and white remain the colours for this crew.

Up and Down at the Pool

What a bizarre day at the pool with male and female teams taking opposite routes to and from success as the day progressed. The girls do not want to accept their abilities as individuals, or collectively, and start off slow before they take control in later games. The boys come out gunning, have easy success, then relax, start to chirp at one another, in-fight, swear and act with ZERO self control.

The girls struggled to unite and play as a unit but found tough ways to win (Cadet and Youth taking different approaches). Then, both teams hit a wall and changed tactics to keep the ball in the hands of only 1 or 2 players who dominated and help win with comfort. That is frustrating since they could win with more ease, less effort, no stress and more pleasure if they brought it all together. Why is it that the Cadet ones want to watch Shae carry the load and the older ones are afraid not to pass to Breda? Hard questions that only they can answer (and they will on Sunday!)

The boys are much different; brilliant, fast, strong, confident in one game and then raving lunatics in the next. It doesn't help that some of them don't bother to show up for games and will not communicate that to coaches or team members, starts everyone off with a bad attitude that just gets worse. The amount of improvisation and refusal to follow simple tactics is mind boggling. We are playing controlled scrimmages vs a team that is here to give us competitive reps to prepare for real matches in March and May. Yet, every tactic is ignored as guys try to burn what they see as weaker opponents only to have the broken tactics explode in their face.

I'm curious to see how they all respond to day 2 after having had billets tonight, should be interesting. I only wish they would all listen to what is said to start each game and believe in themselves.

It wouldn't be right to not mention the great scrimmage that Kaylea had with the Bantams tonight. Talk about applying what you are taught and believing in your coaches direction. Wow!