Thursday, April 19, 2012

U13 Fitness and agility - Session 5

Tonight we had another fitness and agility session with the combined 5 teams, U10-U13 boys.  We had 61 players in total.

We didn't change it much from last week.  We ran a 30-minute combined run and exercise segment then 30 minutes with a ball doing turns and dribbling on the tennis courts.

The energy with the combined teams continues to be there and the boys are responding positively to the program.  That is the most rewarding part of this whole thing.  The coaches of the five teams have great chemistry and the parents who are helping seem like they are excited to be there.

We will make a few tweaks for next week to keep it fresh, but I wanted to give this format 3 weeks like we gave the other format from weeks 1-3.

Two of my observations are that many of the boys are running better and their footwork has improved during the ball skills portion.  So we are seeing improvement and that is a major goal of any program.

One of my hopes is that we can still reconvene on occasion once the season starts.  We will have to co-ordinate that between all of our schedules.  Another hope is that the other coaches take the turns we do and work on those.

Overall, I think the organization worked and we were able to flow from the track to the tennis courts and from sequence to sequence.

There is a difficulty with coaching position.  There are so many players and if I get to one side to address them all, the other side is a fair distance when it's windy AND it's difficult to get 60 young players to stay quiet all at once.  I will have to think this over.  And during the run I use a whistle and the coaches walk the track opposite the running to cheer the players on.

There is a safety concern.  We do have to take some time and cut some stray branches away from the base of the fence around the court and refasten the fence to the bottom guide wire.  There are portions where the fence sticks out.  It's not in our immediate area, but it's there and the coaches would be sick if somebody were to be injured.  This can be a job for some parents while the kids run.

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