We had an interesting week of practice to follow our last
tournament. Our focus was clearly on beating the full court press and shooting
foul shots. Despite not having full attendance at either of the two practices I
feel we made some good headway in accomplishing our practice goals.
Firstly, to help us work on beating a tough full court
press, I enlisted the services of five extremely talented young men to put the
girls through their paces. The girls were intimidated at first but once they
got into the flow of things, I believe they handled themselves very well. Having
the guys come out served multiple purposes for the girls. It showed them that
they can play at a high level versus top talented players, it demonstrated that
they must work together and also winning at the top level means more than just
showing up. The night also managed to be fun for both the girls and boys on the
court.
We also spent a lot more time practicing our foul shots and
saw our percentages go as high as 86% and hovered around the 72% range for most
of the time. We attributed this to having the ladies pay more attention to
their pre-game routine.
Coming up we only have one practice this week due to the
city finals for the boys and I feel it is important to allow the girls to
support their school in these events. However, our one practice should be
another intense one as I have enlisted the services of five girls from the top
city high school and number 2 in province to apply some more full court
pressure against us. I may also use this opportunity to work on our inbounds
plays as they seem to be ineffective and I do not know if it is because of the
defense or our lack of execution. I am interested in seeing the results.
Speaking of rankings, I have been taking a look at the
results of tournaments over the last month. We should be securely in the top three for the province. I estimate that we will be 2nd with Hamilton
Transway ranked first, us second and Sudbury Jam ranked third. Transway is
clearly the class of the group and our only losses have been to them. Sudbury
played a close game with them but we beat Sudbury so the edge should fall in
our favour. The initial rankings will not be coming out till later in the month
but I like to keep on top of these things.
However, one question lingers in my mind: Do I speak up or
allow things to happen as they may? Let me explain. The provincial organization
implemented a league system this season and in the original guidelines it plans
to have two separate championships. One for the league and one for the rest of
the province. We are not in the league so the league championship is not in
question for us BUT the top team is in the league. The problem lies in the fact
that our team is more competitive than all but one team in the league and from
a competitive standpoint we should be competing for this title also. But if we
stay put then the number one team would not be in contention for the provincial
championship. So basically if things
stay as they were originally stated then we become the clear favorites for the
provincial championships. I have a tendency to ask questions and raise eyebrows
but I am leaning towards letting things be and not bring up any concerns.
Sometimes it is better to just sit back and watch but be
prepared for anything.
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