European Championship – Part 1 coach
26/08/2017
A big congratulations for Turkish men and French ladies to win the European championship! It was a tough finals for both men and women. Also a tough week for our girls and boys. I hope you all followed the results this week.
During the next days, we will post a couple of diaries. We asked different people of our team to write down their experience. Because playing this level against amazing teams a whole week long, that is very hard!
Today we start with the COACH diary.
Ty Christian, New Zealand Elite player, has been living in London for a while now. He got to know Niels & Andy through Holy Squid and is a regular visitor of our club. After a while, we suggested him to coach the Belgian Girls, which he (sometimes) happily accepted. Ever since of the beginning of this year, he has been observing them, guiding them and motivating them to bring our best game.
Here a short experience of him on Thursday!
So it was a very good day at the pool for the ladies today. Had a nervous nights sleep, and wait before our first game this morning against Germany. The ladies were super excited for the opportunity to play against the Germans and they sure didn’t disappoint in there performance. The game started with a couple of goals to us witch really relieved a bit of pressure but the Germans pushed back strong and managed to get a goal…….or so they thought.
Luckily we had a bit of luck and the reds disallowed it. From there the ladies really took things up a notch putting in a few more strong goals. Towards the end of the first have the Germans managed to push us back to our tray then unfortunately one of the ladies committed a fowl and got sent to the sin bin allowing the Germans to score a goal just before the break. The second half was a pleasure to watch as the Belgium ladies took complete control, even at one stage being down to 4 players ( Laurie and Ellen in the sin bin) we managed to push the Germans back all the way down the wall to there defensive end. The ladies finished the game strong with a flurry of goals scored through some great team work to finish 9 – 1. Best result ever against Germany.
Second game of the day was against France, the second seed team were going to be dangerous. We went into the game with our focus on improving or personal skills and having fun, and boy did the girls have fun. We put a lot of pressure on the French attack and it showed in the frustration building and building throughout the game. We had a couple of power plays during the second half with the French getting down to 4 players, the ladies stepped things up a notch and put a huge amount of pressure on the French with them being very lucky for us not to score. The game ended with the Belgium ladies playing a very respectable game and it showed with the smiles on the girls faces and the frustration in the French girls eyes. Big rest now for the girls with a big day of finals starting tomorrow first up against gb. The girls are super excited and so am I as the girls continue to build so well through this tournament I can’t wait to see them play again.
A few reactions of the girls about their coach:
Laurie – Captain: we learn a lot from him, just incredible the way that we improved ourselves thanks to him. He always stays calm and really positive .We really want to continue with him for the next steps!!! We were a team, now we are a team with a stronger mentality and with brand new tactics
He believed in us and push us always further, encouraged us in our training before the championship. He helped us getting better personnally and better as a team.
Ellen – Vice-captain: It’s amazing how he tried to really get to know us and adapted the tactics to each of us personally. That’s how we grew as a team. He’s such an amazing coach.
