We started Jaki, Krista, Jaimie, Alicia, Lisa, Shanice with Noe as libero. We came out firing on all cylinders. The Japanese team looked surprised by the size of the block and the power of our attack. Near the end of the first set they changed their strategy. The came out tipping. I am not sure what it is about tipping but it really takes the air out of a teams tires. The team can attack a ball in the seam of the block so hard that it will bounce to the roof, most athletes are ok with that. Good shot we can give that too them. But when a tip scores it makes a team change they way they look at things. Both score one point but one is more acceptable than the other. So the Japan team tipped their way to Victory in the first set.
The start of the second set is when the flu hit our team. Error Flu! It is where one person starts making errors and it gets contagious and next thing you know the whole squad is mixed up in errors. Everything went wrong, passing went out the window, we started to just play safe offensively and we eased up on our serving. During this kind of flu, athletes battled hard with their own confidence and confidence in the person beside them. It is really tough, but as all elite athletes know the only way to cure the flu is confidence. We need to fight hard to believe in ourself. Back to the back pack analogy, finding times in your past when you have been successful. Dr. Skinner from Brandon uses the analogy of a critic. Everyone is their worst critic and he/she takes over in this time of matches. Players start jumping infront of each other, or worse they run away from ball fear it instead of challenging it. The critic takes over the psyche
We are lucky though, because we have a strong team concept and a tremendous belief in each other. As every coach knows in exhibition matches we tend to let athletes try to battle out of situations. We want them to be able to make adjustments fast without us having to call everything.
In our debriefing we really emphasized that this is still just another Mesocycle within our season. It is a good opportunity to learn. I find that most athletes are pretty aware of what happened. During the after match debriefing we let them talk. I am a big believer in Thumper's dad's rule. " If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all."
I like to start my team meetings always talking about what happened positive. Marie Sophie crushed some big line shots in the 3rd and fourth sets. We scored at will in the middle when the opportunity presented itself. Kristi had 6 huge kills for us coming off the bench. Her high school coach would be proud even the old Roblin roll scores against Japanese teams. In high school Kristi was so powerful in her league that everyone would sit on the end line to defend her, so her coach taught her how to hit this well hidden roll shot to the pot. So deemed the Roblin roll after her town. Shanice is an impressive player to watch, she was our best player on most occasions and has found different ways to score in different situations. She has a great poker face and doesn't show any body language if/when she gets down. I really don't think she ever gets down.
The athletes understand what went wrong, when we asked for their opinions they mentioned all the things we wanted to talk about. We then talked about making adjustments. I like to call them the do overs, or mulligans. At the end of the match athletes should take time to remember their plays, reward what they did well. Then they think of some things that got away and to put them in context where next time this happens I can do this... finding a fix. If we dwell in the negative we will stay there a lot longer. Tony Dicicco the U.S, women's national soccer team coach emphasises in his book titled "Catch them being good". Show the athletes what they do well and only show them the execution of doing it correctly. Everyone's critic will have them replay it enough we don't need to show them the errors form a whole bunch of different angles. I think that is a reason why Canadians are so good in hockey. After Jon Toews makes an incredible move on Saturday night on TV, every Canadian hockey kid has gone out and mimicked that move over 200 times by Monday. Probably have a good opportunity to see someone try it the following weekend in rinks around the country.
So what to take out of today.
We have learned, when we play a smaller team we need to be the aggressor. The block is smaller so there are way more green light balls than red light balls. Overpowering will keep them out of system more than a tip should. We need to fight for our confidence. Too look each other in the eye and give back. We can't only do this during the good time. It is easy then. We need to take charge and let everyone know we are ok. Players who come off the bench need to ooze confidence in that situation. WE learned we have great middles! So lets worry about passing first and everything else will be easier.
We will keep learning, the only thing that happened today is that our undefeated season ended. We will definitely win more than we loose.
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