Back on Track

November 30

Heading into a four-day break after our frustrating loss last Sunday is not the ideal situation by any means. Having the ‘we should have’ and ‘we could have’ thoughts staying with you for four days in which you can’t get back on the court is tough.

But when we came back to practice on Friday night, it was clear that the time we had taken to be with our families or friends to celebrate the holiday did us a lot of good. Sometimes being able to step away from the game for a couple days helps clear your head and that is definitely what happened for us this past week. We needed to re-focus, and I think taking a few personal days definitely helped us to do that. We knew Friday’s practice was going to be tough, and we were right. We ran a lot, and then some. We struggled at times, especially at the end of the sprint workouts when we all had to make a timed sprint, but we were able to help each other push through it and get through the hardest part of practice.

Exhausted, we moved into drills in areas we needed to improve in, particularly rebounding. Through the end of practice and in both Saturday and Sunday’s practice, we focused on rebounding on both sides of the floor. We went through a lot of the technicality of boxing out, but also talked a lot about awareness. It is crucial for us to push through fatigue and maintain our awareness of our own role in rebounding. Defensively, we each need to find a body, box out, and grab the ball. Offensively, we need to have the mindset of always attacking the glass once our shot goes up. On Sunday, our ‘word of the day’ was relentless. We need to relentlessly attack the boards and pursue the ball, no matter what. The more we drill this into our minds, the more successful we will be. It was clear in today’s practice that over the past couple days we have already improved in this area. When we scrimmaged, the defensive team was always finding someone to box out, while the offensive team was consistently crashing the boards. Even when we were running through plays without defense, we maintained our relentlessness and continued to crash the boards hard, while still making sure we had someone back on defense.

Our legs were definitely weary in today’s practice after a couple days of hard workouts. But our desire to improve helped us through the weariness. Last weekend forced us to recognize our need for improvement on the boards. While it may have cost us games, the positive side is that we were able to learn from that weakness and work on it these past three days so that in the future we won’t lose games due to rebounding. Every team has its weak spots, but the important thing is to understand those weaknesses, re-focus, and work on them until they no longer exist. The combination of a short re-energizing break and our team’s desire to improve in weak areas led to a successful practice environment over the past few days; this can only help us when we get back in action on Tuesday night at Keystone College.