Netball coaching

Netball started today. I'm coaching year 4's (the Budgies) and year 6's (the Kookaburras) and still playing with the Wrens. The year 4's played at 8.15am, the year 6's at 9.55am and we played at 2.05pm. It was the very first game for the Budgies. They have ten players so I had a big job organising ten girls into positions. Luckily, not everyone wants to shoot and some girls chose to play WD. The hard part was I had to choose two girls to be off for two quarters because they had ten. They didn't mind as much as I thought they would though. It's obvious that some girls get it (netball) and some girls don't. One girl, little Emily, was brilliant. She was directing play and getting intercepts everywhere - and it was only her first game! Some of the girls were a bit lost unfortunately but that will improve. Another girl, Rachel didn't do Netta but she was a brilliant defender, she has really long arms. I didn't do such a bad job telling the twins apart. I have to remember Maddy has a freckle on her chin. The Budgies were up 4-0 at one stage but the other team came back and it was a draw 5-5.

I thought I'd be really bored waiting around between games but because they were running 10-15 minutes behind, the Kookaburras started arriving not long after I finished with the Budgies. I was dismayed to see Prue, who has 'taken over' coaching for the three sessions I can't be there came to the game. I feel so pressured when she's there and I feel she undermines me. She's very nice though and some of the feedback was good. The Team we played had a very tall GA. Unfortunately, our defenders (apart from Demi) are very short. The first quarter went well, but in the second quarter, I had to put Demi in goals, so it was the shorter girls defending. I tried to do something about it but I couldn't. Jess had done the positions for me. We started getting thrashed and it wasn't looking good. One of the parents came up to me and very boldly said "Is there a reason why we have two short defenders? Is there a reason? Put Demi into defence!" I replied calmly that we would have only one shooter then so she said "Well put Sophie into shooter, Sophie can shoot!" Well actually, Sophie had never played shooter in her life. I was horrified. Prue spoke to me after the game and said if that happens again, the parent will be dealt with. Hopefully the other parents understood that it's not my fault the girls in our team are short. Despite a great third quarter, we couldn't come back from the deficit and we lost 22-10. Some of the girls had brilliant games though. Laura shot 9 of our 10 goals, she put on some brilliant moves, like any top GS would. April didn't get any goals which is extremely unusual, but she fed Laura very well. It's nice to get back into it though.

It wasn't looking too positive for the Wrens. We were lucky to have 6 players. We had Clare (shooter), Jess, Sally Elyse who's new and I (midcourters) and Zoe (defender) who was sick. So basically we had no defenders, three centres and a shooter. It was decided that Jess, Elyse and I would share C, GD and GK while Zoe played GS so she didn't have to do much. I played GD, C, GA, GD and I was pretty terrible IMO. I just couldn't defend. We didn't do very well - we lost 21-11. We did well in the last quarter with Jess in GS and Zoe and I defending though. I noticed there is a big difference between running fitness and netball fitness!

Hope we have better luck next week.