Tryouts ... Day Three

Before I start I just wanted to say RIP to Patrick Swayze. He was taken from this world far to early and I enjoyed his movies ... and no guy can say they didn't if you do you are lieing! I say that because his movies such as Dirty Dancing and Ghost were the perfect date movie ... you knew your girl would snuggle close, cry on your shoulder and like you that much more just for watching it! He also was in Point Break another great movie, he was such a diverse actor and as I said taken away much to early ... RIP Patrick you will be missed

Okay back to the blog ... Today was the third day of tryouts ... so we are down to about 25 players now ... much better then the 50 or so that we have had over the previous two days ... today we began to work them a lot harder to see who wants to learn, who wants to play on this team, who has the heart and commitment and most of all who can take what we say and apply it on the floor ...

So we broke them up into three groups ... one group worked on the offense, one on the defence and the last one worked on a variety of drills, using med balls, skipping ropes, rubber bands, hurdles and the rope ladder ... Myself and Sharif were in charge of offence while Coach D looked after all the training exercises and Coach M took on the defense ... We worked all the forwards on their roles and ran through a couple of things first ... most of the guys are starting to understand it which is good to see and some are falling behind ... they have some homework to do to catch back up with the rest of the forwards as they make their run for the team ... We only went through the beginning stages for the forwards ... which I thought was pretty simple as did the guys so tomorrow we will expand on that ... The guards ... a lot more of them then forwards trying out but luckily there are 3 on the floor at all times so we can get through the beginning stages of the offense ... we went over the rules and the basic movements ... they all go the movesments forgetting things here and there but that is expected for the first day ... what bothered me was when we went and put some D on them they couldn't remember, some so much they thought it was an invetation to play one on one ... and once we cleared that we found out that a bunch of them do not know how to get open using a v-cut or L-cut heck some didn't even know the step into the defender and step out to the ball trick ... makes me wonder ... but again its the first day and I know that they can better from there ... we shall see ...

I don't think I wrote about this or not but if I did you will have to bare with me ... On Sunday we had a conditioning day with the players ... this weekend every year is the Terry Fox Run and we were told that last year we had a poor turn out (which we did, me and two players isn't a team ... mind you not like we had many more bodies) so I had an idea that everyone that has made it to the next stage of the tryouts would have to participate in the Terry Fox Run on the Sunday ... well the coaching staff loved it and 13 of the guys showed up and ran the 10K run with me ... they all completed it between 1 to 1.5 hours and I was able to shave 2 minutes off my time from last year completing the 10K in 45 minutes ... not bad considering I haven't run that long since the last Terry Fox Run lol ... So the remaining players that did not make the Sunday run will have to run the 10K with me tomorrow night ... and get this a couple of the guys from Sunday want to run it with me and the guys tomorrow as well ... good job Mussie! glad to see that you are serious about the team this year and getting into game shape for the season!

For more info www.terryfox.org

I'll let you know how they do tomorrow with their 10K run ... oh did I mention that since they missed the run without a valid excuse they will also be running some hills before the practice starts at 7:30pm ... we shall see anyways lol

Until then ...

Coach Hopps