The Final Countdown

The homestretch … the final days….the end is near ….. the final countdown.

No matter how you state it, the season is drawing to a near. Only two weeks left before the provincial championships. It is shaping up to be an intense final two weeks as I am trying to fit in a couple extra activities to get us ready for the championship weekend. In addition to our regular 4 remaining practices I have scheduled an exhibition game, a visit to a university and a performance consultant session.

The exhibition game is against a team playing an age group up but the coach has stated that we should be competitive with his team. The exhibition game will serve dual purposes for both myself and the players. The ladies need the competition to keep their competitive vibes going as we have been going through a lot of practices lately and they need to play against someone else. It will also help to keep their confidence up heading into the final weekend and hopefully it will allow some of my injured players an opportunity to ease back into game mode without the pressure of the championship weekend. From a coaching perspective it will allow us to gauge the effectiveness of our newly implemented defensive schemes and offensive adjustments. The game will also help to keep the ladies motivated as with most athletes they strive on competition and the hope is to fuel their hunger as the season winds down.

It is fair to say that I look forward to practices and this upcoming week is not exception. I have continued to be in contact with some of my basketball associates and should have at least 2-3 practice players at both our practices this week.  This will hopefully allow us to get some competitive practices in this week, I say hopefully because we have attempted to do so in the past but haven’t been so successful. My goal is to work the ladies extremely hard this week, try some new things in the exhibition game, work them hard during the university visit, then have two easier practices the final week. My motto has been “practice hard, game easy”, meaning the harder we work in practice the easier things will be in games. We were fortunate to have a guest coach in last week and she mentioned that her team uses the phrase “compete and appreciate” to describe their practices. She described it as, the players compete extremely hard in practice and then they appreciate each other for pushing them to their limits and beyond. One of the knocks against our team is that they are too nice, both in game and practices. They tend to take it easy on each other in practice and lack the killer instinct in games to completely destroy any team they play. If I could change one thing it would be that they were more competitive in practice and view it as the sanctuary that I often refer to it as. Now don’t get me wrong, they are extremely hard working in practice and give me every thing they have. That is probably the main reason I like to bring outsiders into our practice so that the ladies have someone else to compete against.

One of my long-time players said last week, “coach how long have you been trying to get a team that all get along and now you complain that we are too social! “The interesting fact is that she is completely correct. I have spent years and tried multiple ways to get a team that connects and this team seems to be connecting on an even greater basis than they did last year. So I guess I should be thankful and to remember the old saying “be careful what you wish for”. In reality, I am very appreciative of how connected these ladies are as it makes the season that much more special.

Oh, and by the way, the final rankings heading into the championship weekend came out and we are officially ranked #2 heading into the weekend.