Playing Coach p2

On Tuesday, we arranged a scrimmage between the girls and the JV team, which was simultaneously encouraging and discouraging. On the one hand, I love that the freshmen boys have so much potential and already play so well, but it is nonetheless difficult to watch the girls struggle so much. We were missing at least three of our "starters" that would be at the SJA Invite, including our sophomore handler and our only "tall girl" (the 6'ish sophomore). I think the score ended up being 2-11. In the two points that I played with the girls, my matchup scored (d'oh) and then I assisted for our first goal. The only other point that the girls scored came when Porter, the varsity/JV coach, went on with them and hucked it to one of the girls, who jammed it in to another girl for the goal. I could cite a couple reasons that the girls underperformed during the game, but I feel that the score really wasn't important so much as the fact that the girls got to play as a team for once.

At practice on Wednesday, I had the girls do partner throwing for a while again, then warm up and do a straight-up marking drill. I then split them into 3 teams of 3 to do the Box Game: 3v3 in a 15x15yd box, the object being to complete 10 passes in a row with defense and the standard stall count. The game was intended to get the girls a lot of touches and teach them how to complete passes in tight, confused situations. We didn't have enough time to work on dump movement, so I thought this game would teach them a way to move the disc at high stall counts, albeit an ugly way. It was more difficult even than I anticipated, and though Caitlin's team eventually won the first round, they only got up to 9 completions against the other team before the girls couldn't continue. It was a hot day, and it is a very tiring game. We then ran through ho-stack in an attempt to teach the basic ideas of that offense, because I thought we might try it out over the weekend (I ended up never using it, but Stuyvesant used it against us, so at least the girls had seen it before).

Next, Caitlin wanted to do a simple tutorial on how to call some of the more important violations that come up in a game--fast count, pick, double-team, marking fouls, etc. We explained some of those rules, then sat in the shade and reiterated what we wanted for the tournament--to remember the things we had worked on in practice, to play hard, and to have fun. We reminded the girls to get plenty of rest, start hydrating early, and eat lots of vegetables/pasta to prepare the body nutritionally for the rigors of a savage tournament.