Coaching Career Off to Poor Start

A week ago we discovered that the inter-school leagues were about to start and so last week we set about training our players in boys football and girls netball. I have been working with the netball team (despite the fact that I know nothing about the game except what I was able to garner on Wikipedia) and we had our first training session on Wednesday. After the practice I was feeling pretty good about the team - some people were good at defence, we had some good shooters, and it seemed like we could pass well. Boy was I wrong.

Things got off to a bad start in our first game on Friday when our players didn't know how to line up at the beginning of the game. Lots of them had never played before, I myself didn't know, and hadn't thought to tell them. The other team ran circles around us from the first whistle to the last and the final score was nothing less than a 15-0 thrashing. This may seem bad but first it has to be put into perspective: we had raw rookies in Grade 8 playing against players with several years of experience in Grades 11 and 12. The league system is so bizarre that instead of matching schools up against opponents with similar grade levels, we are stuck playing secondary schools. As a result the other team was taller, faster, better trained, and even had nice uniforms!

A question that many might have is what is this game netball. Basically netball is to basketball what ringette is to hockey - a game invented for women to play in an era when women weren't supposed to play real sports. Each player has assigned zones where they can go, you can't dribble (have to pass right away), only certain players can shoot and must do so within a "shooting circle" and the hoop has no backboard. That's netball in a nutshell.

So we'll go back to the drawing board this week and try and improve some of the fundamentals - passing under pressure, getting open, playing defence, where to stand. Hopefully our opponents next week will be of a similar grade level and we have a chance to play a decent game, otherwise another thrashing is in our future. The team is fun though and the game is actually not so bad once you get into it - after all I like pretty much any sport that involves a ball and two teams.