02/02/06 Indoor

We had the best attendance yet this year, with 18 girls showing up for this week's Coles indoor practice. I think the playbook session really motivated players to show, as many were excited about the new offense Zac and I were introducing.

Again, Zac and I were somewhat disappointed with the level of throwing the girls exhibited. They were undoubtedly getting better, but still constantly throwing inaccurately. Also, it is much easier to throw in the no-wind environment of Coles than outside. I am tempted to just have them throw all practice, but we have so much other stuff to go over before the first tournament.

After the throwing, we ran a cone-to-cone handler drill that the girls pretty much did half-heartedly, probably because I did not demonstrate it at full speed--my fault. I think we need to design this drill a bit better, because it while it works basic skills, we should have tailored it a bit more to practice something more specific about our offense. Either way, its a useful drill but I don't think we are running it in the future with our time constrictions.

The second one we did was the butterfly drill, which was again poorly designed because we had the majority of girls waiting in line instead of cutting. It's hard without more space. Also, we need to figure out a way to train the timing of it better, something that would become quite clear by the end of practice.

We did a dump cut demonstration and drill (with semi continuation) that worked pretty well, and we concluded that the 45-degree upfield dump cut was not effective and would be seldom used (at least for now) in our offense.

The last drill we ran was a stack-simulation of the offense, with mixed results. The timing did not work exactly the way we predicted in the meeting, and this can be attributed to our inexperience teaching the offense. Zac and I have never actually ran the offense or even participated in it--we've only heard explanations by players experienced in it. The foundations of the offense are simple and intuitive, but there are several little wrinkles we should iron out with the captains.

On the positive side, everyone was upbeat despite the lack of a scrimmage and the difficulties of the new system. People were slowly getting it, and it's only a matter of time before everything clicks. Unfortunately we anticipate most of the opposing defenses to be zone, but zone will be a lot easier to teach.

Zac and I must be confident and able to deliver a consistent, clear message or the confusion will be too much. Next week we will be better prepared.