This past weekend was a very important one for us. We needed to get two wins at home, which would place us at 6 wins and 6 losses. Being .500 would be incredible considering the strike and having to learn on our own. We had a tough first semester with playing 3 top ten nationally ranked teams.
This weekend was Saskatchewan Huskies, even though they were winless heading into the weekend, we have learned that there are no easy matches in Canada West. The Huskies had taken sets off some pretty impressive teams. Leading up to this weekend was also my first time being able to be back in the gym for a full week of practice. This made for an interesting dynamic.
We decided to take Monday off as we have been going for 6 straight weekends and felt that the extra day rest would be more beneficial than the practice. Sometimes less is more. Tuesday we went for 1.5 hours and had a practice with a lot of reps and movement. We are able to put up two courts at every practice so it gives us a chance to rep a lot of different things. It was a fun practice as we were hitting different tempo’s of sets. Some of the outsides had the opportunity to hit some of the middle set selections and the mids had the opportunity to hit higher sets. It was a good way to introduce myself back to the team.
Weds though we got down to business, we watch video in practice and discussed what we would dot different defensively. We would show it on a white board, then go on court and practice it. I had used the same type of drill for this part of practice. In retrospect it was too long of one drill for the time of night 8:30-9:30pm and the fatigue level of the athletes. Earlier that day the athletes had a good weight session with Sean our weight coach, which help contribute to the fatigue level. Thursday was more games specific and what we would try to implement offensively.
I also was a little grumpy this week. I have a big fear of playing teams we should beat. Maybe it stems from myself as an athlete and I would get complacent in training leading up to those games. I really try to push the athletes so they are prepared to be in an extremely close match. A few years ago a friend of mine, Frank Enns, talked to me about different mind sets that athletes tend to have. Athletes most often have an idea of the how we should do against a team before we play them. We should beat this team easy, I would be surprised they get over 20. Or this team is really good every game will be within one or two, or worse thinking we will be lucky to get to 20 on this team.
Against Sask. I was worried of “they would be lucky to get to 20 on us mind set” We used a video from Versus to help set the tone before the match. Becky has been using videos before the matches and believes it is why we are on a run. So we are not superstitious but why risk it.
As it turned out We played really well Friday and had strong attention to detail winning 3-0 and they never got to 20. Kellie set the ball very well, Chloe had 8 kills and jaryn had 9 kills with a hitting efficiency of .412. As a team we were able to control the ball well and attacked over .300 which is incredibly high.
Saturday though was a different story. We fell into our own mind trap. Since the match the day before went so easy we were not as focussed in the process as the night before. Terry Orlick, a reknown sport psychologist wrote a paper “Winning after Winning” it can be found online at http://www.zoneofexcellence.ca/free/winning.html It basically says that it is difficult to win back to back and have success because things have changed. For us we found our selves focussing on offense only. We had scored so well the night before, that when Sask made adjustments we struggled. They changed their defense and we had to find different ways to score. For this reason our total focus went to offense and we let slip our overall game. We had 16 serving errors in the 4 sets. We lost the third set and at one point in the third set it was 6 out 7 servers missed. Sask serves incredibly tough and with our focus on offense we seemed to be suprized with the pace. WE had more 0 and 1 passes than ever before. The night before we were just focussing on the present. It is a big lesson for us to learn and hopefully we don’t have to relearn it again this year.
We won the match in four, so we achieved our goal of 500. In our after match debrief we discussed the level of focus and where it was at. Then I was able to address the team and thank them for their commitment this first semester. We have an impressive group of girls here. Each one of them has contributed to our success and found ways to make us better as a whole. Different people have all led in different ways. Claire Willerton has been a tremendous leader. She is a fifth year player, who we are converting to the outside. Claire has been asked to come off the bench and help us when we are in trouble. She has done this without one complaint. She is still practicing incredibly hard and showing what team first really means. We know that Claire will be ready for the challenges that we face second semester. It would be easy for Claire to be upset, but she has chosen the high road and is an impressive example. Claire makes us better everyday.
WE have a week off to recover from the season, then we will begin again on Dec 13th as classes now go until the 20th. It is a chance to rep some things out. I myself love to be in the gym with this group, but in talking with Bobbie our Strength Guru, this is important for the group. Need to stick to schedule. Less is more.
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