Zooming to the basketball ’net
Dundas’s Thomaidis has done a lot in her long coaching career. But running an online training camp is a new one even for her.
There’s no shortage of challenges when you’re the head coach of a national team with realistic designs on an Olympic medal. Picking the best roster. Implementing the ideal game plan. Juggling personalities and egos. Finding time for media obligations and maybe a few minutes of a personal life. And on and on.
But holding a virtual training camp when nobody can be together?
Might as well try painting a picture of a rainbow when all the colours are in different rooms. Or different homes altogether.
“I said to the players, ‘This is the first one I’ve done,’” Lisa Thomaidis says. “‘Let’s see how it goes.’”
The Dundas native is the coach of the Canadian women’s basketball team, the squad that’s ranked fourth in the world. The one scheduled to play its first game July 26 against eighth-ranked Serbia in Tokyo. The one with players scattered all over the world right now.
That’s clearly a bit of a problem. Worse, even those on home soil can’t get together because of COVID-19 lockdown rules. Which is frustrating as they see other teams from other countries they might have to face this summer working out as if nothing unusual was happening.
“You can sit back and complain about that and play the victim,” Thomaidis says. “Or we can figure out what the next-best step is.”
Which brings us to this week’s training camp that wraps up Friday. The one being held in cyberspace.
For a couple hours every day, all the players — including Hamilton’s Kia Nurse — gather in front of their computers on a Zoom call for their virtual training camp. Swapping nets for the ’net, which is a concept that’s baffled some people on the outside, Thomaidis admits.
“People were asking, ‘What are you doing?’ ” she says. “‘Are they working out while you’re watching?’ ”
Good question. Are they? “No,” she laughs. “No.” They’re studying game film, learning new wrinkles in the offence, working on strengthening their minds and mental toughness, concentrating on technical issues and just trying to create some chemistry with each other.
Trying to do it all as seamlessly as possible.
Thomaidis isn’t a teacher. She points that out a couple times. Not by training, anyway. She never went to teachers’ college or studied it. But she is a teacher. Anyone who’s been around her will tell you that. But, this is new even for her.
She’s doing what she can under the circumstances. It isn’t always perfect. She can’t even get to her office so she’s running the sessions from home. As a result, there have been more than a few times the dogs have started barking or the doorbell has rung. Many of her players are with their club teams in Europe where the time difference can be an issue and WiFi cuts in and out.
Yet, she says it’s worked. It’s not the same as on-court practice which she’d obviously prefer, but it’s helped. In fact, while she wouldn’t advise dumping all actual workouts for virtual ones on a permanent basis, there’s some good stuff that’s come out of this. Things she’ll apply in the future.
It’s all called making lemonade out of lemons. Doing what you can. Finding a way. All the other clichés, too.
But, at some point, they still have to actually get on a court and do some basketball things. So, when will the entire team finally be able to get together as a group for a real face-to-face practice? April? May? June?
“It’ll be in Japan,” she says.
As in, just days before their first game?
“Yup.”
Gulp.