PRACTICE #17 – THE ONE TO FORGET ABOUT IT

This practice was doomed to not be good since the inception. The girls were eager to participate in a friendly volleyball tournament organized by a student as his CAS hour project. I don’t mind at all my athletes participating in other activities. What annoys me is the fact they would MISS my practice to do that. Other coaches strictly forbidden athletes to participate in other sports at all.

Anyway, we reached a consensus where I would finish practice early (5PM instead of 6PM) so they could go there. My main goal in this practice was to train new formations, specially hamburger one where we need to stay back all the time.

It was a disaster.After three or four minutes, Mikayla was not feeling well and asked to rest a bit. Having to adapt Inês as the third person on the defensive system was not what I expected and also some players where not with their mind in the practice. To make things worse, Kyra started to feel pain due to shin splints. It was very frustrating for me because I’ve felt that most of the girls did not want to be there and we had a GREAT chance of practicing defensive system with Marta being here. She is fast and she can dribble so if we could hold her back, it will prove that the system worked. After one hour of practice I’ve noticed that things would not work out so I’ve ended it, kind of disappointed with my athletes, which is something extremely rare.

I thought a lot what was the reason and what I did wrong and what was frustrating me. Since I am the talkative one, I’ve decided to address it. I’ve talked to the players that kind of disappointed me and explained my reasons behind the practice. They all responded really well about my concerns, restoring my confidence that we are all here with the objective to make this team the best possible. Anyway, we have one practice left and I hope we are really focused on that one. Before that, time to celebrate in our international dinner! At least was fun seeing the girls enjoying themselves playing volleyball, specially Bella (that never played) on court with her football cleats.