Referee and Me

This past weekend we hosted the largest national championship in the 103 year history of Canadian water polo finals. It was 2 categories, 18&U men and 18&U women, held at Pan Am pool, using 2 tanks 25m x 20m.

The event was amazing, no issues of protest or violence, no minor official shortages or problems, no coaches yelling at the bench, none of the usual stumbling blocks at these sorts of events. This was a long weekend in Winnipeg, a traditional date to go and open cottages, so it was really huge that this was pulled off so easily.


There was one referee issue that really annoyed me though. There was a ref who really should not have been there, a guy that NO team wants at any event, ever. He has a strong negative history with our club and it shows up every time he referees us. Above is a picture of the kick-out board the first time he refereed our girls team. It shows 15 major fouls for us against 8 for the other team. That can happen, sure, but what tells the story is the game by game stats. He refereed a second game and it happened again, we were excluded twice for every opponent exclusion. That stands out since the 3 games he did not referee had us with the same number of fouls, or close, to our opponent.

That bias should never exist at this level. I am going to make some effort to ensure that he stops being sent to events outside his province as he gets too many people upset and plays too great a role in influencing game outcomes over the players themselves. I won't use his name as that is not what this blog is about. But I will say that everyone involved knows exactly who the ref is. The majority of refs, who did a great job all weekend, are not the issue!

The dialogue about referees and bias can go on forever. I don't want to do that here as it is best done with data, hard data, from game stats and I will let the referees do that themselves. Peer review is the best method to process this but once in awhile coaches have to vent so I touch on that here.

Ignorance is not bliss

What is the weakness that exists in people to allow them to feel better about themselves when they belittle others, is it insecurity? This practice has always been something that annoyed me and it was one of the things that Darko and I realized we shared as a common viewpoint soon after we met. These people have no place in sport. If you want to feel good about yourself then do something that can be appreciated and measured as a contribution; don't just put down others. This is important for my blog because Manitoba Water Polo is full of people who do nothing but never stop undermining those of us who are producing national team players, pro's and NCAA scholarship athletes.

I mention this now because of something I heard the other day about me, as a coach. It was a comment that a stranger made to someone that knows me pretty well. The basic statement I am referring to was that I was a coach she wanted to avoid since I had a "win at all costs" attitude. When I was younger this would have made me quite angry since I would have wanted to know what I did to earn that reputation from someone I had never met. Now it makes me smile before I get upset as I know it is based on ignorance and gossip by others who are insecure.

In this instance it was funny because it came from a parent with a child in another club that is recreational. When we were supposed to play a Provincial Championship with that club at the 14&U level this spring they refused to play girl vs girl and boy vs boy with their teams because they could not compete. Since we train all year as separate genders I was not prepared to combine my 2 teams into 1 co-ed group even though I knew it would result in a huge lopsided win, just like all our other teams. Instead of playing a championship I offered a series of "friendly" games with their co-ed team playing our girls and then our boys. I had a couple dozen players playing, all different levels and experience; they had 9 or 10 players, mostly veterans, they wouldn't let new, inexperienced, players play.

The games were all close, a tie for the boys and a 1 goal loss for our girls vs a team with the strongest 3 or 4 of each gender from the other club. They stacked their team to win, I kept mixed abilities together to develop 2 teams and 2 genders on a plan toward future growth and development. A player on that co-ed team was the child of the parent who said I have a "win at all cost" attitude. I guess people see what they want or, in this case, don't see what is there before them.

If this person had taken the time to meet me and talk to me they would learn what I am about, what I value. They'd learn things like I coach a young woman with Cystic Fibrosis, a 16 year old that I have coached for many, many years. And she is a starter on my teams at every stage, and will remain so as long as she keeps playing. She's a good water polo player but she will never be world class, her lungs will not allow it. However I value her contribution to our team so she will keep being a major part of it even if she sometimes "runs out of gas" in the middle of a counter attack. Certainly that is not something that is in any way related to "winning at all costs" and it does nobody any good to ignore reality in order to create fiction about what I value or teach.

If you are a person who likes to judge others but not to meet them or talk to them then you are not doing anyone any favours. Take time to understand what you believe and where the beliefs come from. Consider the bias of the people who tell you things to prevent you from forming your own opinion. If you are a parent of a child in sport you are not only hurting your own kid by being uninformed about coaches, philosophies and values - you are also damaging sport with uninformed opinions.

PS I don't know any athlete that has ever thrown a water polo ball at a net and thought "I hope I miss" or started a game thinking "I hope we lose this game". No, everyone loves to win, it is more fun than the alternative. I love to win too, it's just not why I coach, it's a product of a successful program. Usually the ones who focus on the winning of others are the people who never win themselves.

Exercise and the Brain

Being a coach, who writes a coaching blog, I felt I had to post a link to this CBC video clip about exercise and the brain.

The link probably will not work from "Blogger" so you may have to cut & paste the address in your browser address bar.

http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/brain_gains/brain_gains_2.html

NCAA

Congratulations to Serena Bredin for helping Hawaii qualify for the NCAA Championships in May. Hawaii was awarded an "at large" berth based on their record against stronger teams in the league. There is a very good chance the team will place top 4 and that will be quite an achievement considering it is the best league in the world for women's water polo.

Professionalism

I want to deal briefly with professionalism in coaching and why it is fundamentally different than volunteerism. This is important for several reasons, one being that it is how I make my living, but I am discussing it today because of how it shapes Water Polo in Manitoba.

When someone accepts a professional coaching role it involves responsibility. It is a "the buck stops here" kind of responsibility that means you can't hide from it. This is very different from a volunteer coach who can drop responsibility and have little consequence. When most sport in Canada was run by volunteer coaches the difference between these two leadership functions was less obvious. At that time people viewed being paid to coach as a soft, luxury filled, lifestyle. Non professionals viewed jobs in coaching as being paid to do what they did for fun. But the roles are not the same, not even close.



An example of this is "obligation to attend" where a volunteer coach can say that their work ie accounting, teaching, bus driving, will not allow them to be at practice. A professional coach can't use this excuse to avoid leadership and their athletes know that they will see the same face leading every session all season as they pursue a common goal.

Another difference professionals must accept is that the hours needed to provide adequate training are "determined by program not personal availability". This is a huge issue for us in Canada as we make the change to LTAD program models. There is no way that clubs across this country will be able to provide adequate programming for athletes from 10-25 years of age who train 6-12 times per week with a few volunteers. It is foolish to contemplate that and as teenage athletes move their training hours closer to their weekly educational hours we can see why coaching is needed to be delivered professionally.

One problem we see here that is facilitated by volunteerism is "lack of responsibility for decisions". I work with a club that has professional leadership and coaches have clear authority to present plans for annual training and then obligate teams to attend events, play in leagues, go to camps etc. When the club geographically nearest to us has volunteer leaders we can see that a meeting where we agree on competition or training can have the program fail at time of delivery because the coach who agreed to it did not have authority to make decisions. This happens every year, over and over. Our local clubs have a dialogue, agree, then it all falls apart on delivery because some parent along the line, who has equal authority for program decisions, over rules a volunteer coach with the other club.

That different style of authority is the root of the Manitoba problems in high performance programming. Families that begin in a volunteer lead club that does not mandate training more than 2 or 3 times per week have a very hard time accepting that players need to train more than 5x week as they get older and that this requires trained professionals for leadership. This is really important to me now as I am planning the transition for when I move out of the main professional leadership role in Manitoba. I want there to be an expectation that this province will continue to be lead by a professional coach but there is very strong opposition to that from the Neptunes members.

That opposition is important because in the 16 years that I have coached Bushido professionally there has never been 1 penny contributed to my earnings from Manitoba Water Polo or Sport Manitoba. There have been carded national team athletes from my programs since the beginning but the MWPA has never connected that to my coaching and linked it to the grants available for high performance coaches. So, money has been available to pay coaches from government sources in Manitoba but only through the Provincial Sport Organization. That never comes our way since there is no recognition that professional coaching and high performance training are valued in the community. Hopefully I will see that change before I retire.

Pre Game Team Cheer

This past weekend I witnessed something quite remarkable at the Alberta Open Water Polo tournament in Calgary. It was not an event or a performance by a player, it was a psychological change that manifested itself in a team cheer. I will explain more.

The normal pre-game activities of our teams will always come to a conclusion with a team cheer, at poolside, right before the players line up to play. That is not unusual, most teams do that. Also not unusual is the type of cheer that we normally hear; a loud, intimidating scream. Something that says to the other team that they better watch out, we are ready to go. It is an outward sign of aggression to a large degree and a small sign of unity at the team level. After all, anyone can be taught to scream with a group like everyone else.

What I saw that was so different was our Youth Men taking their aggressive cheer and turning it into a quiet, introspective exercise that was a sign of unity. These hormonal teenage boys decided to touch fingers in a circle and very quietly say "Bushido" in a hushed tone. It could only be heard by those in the group or people standing right near our bench. Of course this turns the purpose of the cheer upside down, it makes the boys feel like they are talking to one another, rest of the world be damned. If you know these guys you will understand how very odd that is since they are quite often "in your face" guys.

That change in pre-game or quarter break "cheering" happened to coincide exactly with the change in the boys performance. They took their considerable skill and focussed it for a full 4 quarters to beat a very solid team from Fraser Valley. That team was between them and the medal round at the tournament so it was the right time to change their ways.


I missed the first time they did the cheer as I was coaching the 12&U team at the same time. When I first saw this during the second half I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I didn't know how it came to be. I asked Heather if it was her idea and she just laughed and said no. There is no doubt that having a woman coach influenced the boys a little bit, opened them to the possibility that a change to the way we have done things would be ok.

What I am curious about, and will study very closely the next little while, is the influence a female coach has on boys confidence. The boys skill level did not increase this weekend, what changed was an application of skills they have carried with them for some time. Exactly why they found the confidence to be different and play as a group against bigger, stronger opponents is very interesting. This is what the different cheer has caused me to review, how did Coach Heather get these long-time players to become the best generation of male age group boys from Bushido? How did they change the pattern of under achievement we have carried so long?

Say Much with Few Words

A little while ago I was asked a question by a national coach, a guy who has been to the Olympics, a person who gives water polo pretty much all of his attention each day. What he asked was "should an athlete fit a program or should the program fit the athletes?" That might not seem like it has much to it, you believe one or the other and it's no big deal. But that is not what I heard in the question.

What I heard were the problems facing Water Polo in Canada right now put into a single question. National team programs that are geared to international success MUST be designed for that success. Meaning, of course, that athletes should fit the program. This is not how we have traditionally developed teams. Past success has come from coaches assembling the best players and designing a system for the team that uses their skills and abilities to greatest advantage. That never helped our men succeed and it only helped our women succeed when European countries did not put a priority on the women's game with a national system.

Now we have the organizational maturity to see that the planning must be long range, the skills must be foundational, the players must fit the design and have no serious flaws. This brings us back to the LTAD and how it is helping deal with this reality. But, LTAD is complicated, it is not understood by many and it is hard to summarize for people not familiar with a sport culture. That is why one sentence said so much to me, it is a way to explain what changes are coming in the sport.

If we look at the success over generations by the Hungarian and Yugoslavian/Serbian/Croatian/Montenegran teams, and the rapid success of the Chinese, we see recognizable systems. Players come and go but the systems are the root of the success. This is where we are going too and it was great to hear that question come from a coach leader who is trying to get us on that path and keep us there for generations.