Well after almost a year of preparing for the FISU games as a staff, we have 5 full days and 2 games remaing in this adventure. We play Russia later today (5:30 pm local time) and a win would put is in a game for 5th and 6th place against either Brazil or China (again!). A few days removed from the disappointment of our loss against France, we now get refocused on trying to finish strong and match Canada's best ever result of 5th place. It should be noted however that those 2 fifth places finishes were out of 6 teams (1993) and 12 teams (2005). Should we be able to finish out with 2 wines, we would have accomplished something special especially considering the reality under which our team is selected and brought together. As I had previously written, a majority of teams against whom we compete have been preparing for more than 6 months and some for a year, not to mention that they are fully subsidized by their national sport federations. For example, France has been training since last June, they do not pay anything and have 5 senoir national team players on their roster while our players must pay their way to these games. We the chance to have some additional support and time to prepare, we feel strongly that we could have progressed further in this tournament. France appears to be the strongest team so far and may end up winning it all. If they do, I think our team can hold their heads high about having been on the brink of eliminating them.
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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