BAC Blog!

San Diego County Cup

May 6, 2008 on 4:48 pm | In Uncategorized |

This past weekend was the San Diego County Cup, and we took a team down there. The competition was fierce, but the team never gave up. We chose to focus on four key things during our games. 

 The first was “safe passes,” this was a continuation of what we had been working on in practices and our previous games. To make a safe pass we want to make sure our teammate is looking and knows the ball is coming. To do this we call their name, and then wait until we see their eyes. Then we want to put the pass somewhere where only our teammate can get it. We don’t want to pass a 50/50 ball. By the end of the tournament we were able to withstand the other teams’ hard press and make safe passes to our teammates, ultimately leading to a lot of assists. 

The second was “press.” Our goal here was to make it as hard as possible for the other team to move the ball. Once we started talking in terms of not letting your player get the ball our defense really came together. We often forced our opponents to run out the shot clock which gave us a lot of opportunities on the counter attack. 

 The third was “movement/create.” The movement was particularly important because most of our games were played in a pool much larger than we were used to. During our first game in that pool we were stopping at half a lot, not realizing how much farther we still had to go. However after that game we made a great adjustment and started countering all the way down to the 2M line. This fed into a balanced offense where people could drive and “create” an opportunity to score. 

 The final focus was “head on a swivel.” This means that we want to constantly be looking around instead of focusing on just one person or thing. The idea is to make sure that we can see everything that is going on in the pool whether it is in front of us or behind us. It sounds simply, but it is actually not something that feels very natural. 

The team seemed to have a great time away from the pool as well. As a coach it was very fun to see the kids away from the pool, and get to know them all a little better. The kids also seemed to get to know each other better, enjoying the company of kids form other schools and grades. On Saturday afternoon we were lucky enough to be able to go to the Fearn’s beach house, and the kids were able to play in the ocean for an hour or so and enjoy the lovely weather. 

 All in all, the trip was a great success, and I hope we can go again next year! Thank you to all the athletes for making the trip, and a BIG thank you to Ron Lynch for coming with us! 

Amy