Practice Schedule Update

All,

Thanks to Michelle Johnson, she pointed out to me our next couple practices have been posted on the Swing Web site. http://www.wisconsinswing.com/EventDetail.aspx?ID=561 . This coming Sunday the 27th at 1:00 - 2:30pm - Keva, and next Wednesday at 7:00 - 8:30 pm - Keva. I'll post this to the blog as well if anyone would like to weigh in on the practice scheduling times and days. When we collectively got together and picked our tournament schedule I was under the impression we were going to get 1 time and place and stick to it to make everyone's summer schedule easier. I'm hoping that that gets nailed down sooner than later, I'll keep you posted on what I can find out.

~coach g

Tournament update

All,

I received an email from Lora this morning saying that she and Dana needed a final decision on whether or not we're chaning from the May 9-11 to the 16-18. Via email and the blog there were 4 parents that responded, 2 for and 2 who leaned towards not switching. My decision was to tell Lora that we'll keep the schedule AS IS and stay with the May 9-11 tournament in Milwaukee since that was one of the dates the collective parents chose.

I know some parents expressed concern over a Friday - Sunday tournament and that is what the May 9-11 one appears to be also. I will get as much detail on the tournament and see if we have any control over when we may be able to play.

In my notes I have that Mackenzie and Amy will be out for Saturday. How does Friday work for everyone assuming the games are later? I'm posting this email on the blog also, so if you could respond to the Friday question I would appreciate it.

I hope to see you all tomorrow night at 7 at Keva.

~coach g

May 16th-18th Tournament

I may have noted in a past email but I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that the May 16th - 18th tournament that we are currently NOT registered for, but that serves as a qualifier for the August 1-3 tournament, does have Friday games. I am not sure if we have any say or control over what time the Friday game would be, but this was brought up as a point to consider in our decision.

~coach g

Next Practice

Our next practice will be Wednesday April 23rd at Keva from 7-8:30 PM. Lora will have both her teams there and there will be 2 courts for all of us. This means that we will have time to run through a number of things: keep working on the swing offense, especially since we only had 4 running it this week, look at a couple full-court-press/trap defenses, and hopefully start to work on playing offense against a zone, and hopefully the opportunity to run some more scrimmaging. I hope that many of you can make it, I know we wanted a later practice so we could involve as many of you who have other obligations earlier after school.

Let me know if you can't make it so I can get an idea of the numbers we will have. Please just put your responses in the comments for this post.

Tournament Schedule

On the email I mentioned how we are not in the May 17th tournament in Appleton because it is a U14 and younger tournament. Also, Lora told me that the May 9-11 Tournament we are currently registered for is NOT a qualifier for the end of the year Last Man Standing Tournament on August 1-3, but the May 16-18 tournament in Waukesha is a qualifier.

Please tell me how you feel about trying to switch from the May 9th weekend to the May 16. Also, the May 16th tournament is atleast 5 games. From my notes I have that Mackenzie can't make that Saturday and that Brook would be out the entire weekend.

I'd like to hear your feedback while we still have a chance to try and change something if you'd like.

~coach g

Last night's practice

It was too bad we only had 4 ladies make it last night because we had a good opportunity to run through our set offense. With the help of one girl from Lora's team, our four ladies did a good job running the swing offense; we easily got the motions down but we need to continue to buckle down on using the fundamentals along with those motions. We were anxious for a lot of the screens and ended up running past the oncoming screen instead of waiting, taking a few steps in the opposite direction to get the defender moving, and then exploding off the set screen. If we can use good fundamentals along with the movements of the swing offense, I think we'll be in good shape.

Also, yesterday we got the opportunity to run a 1-2-2 full court trap against the 14u team. It was our first time but we did well. I would like to implement a couple different traps in our games in order to help us control the flow of the game and try to force some turn-overs. With any full-court defense we have to be ready to sprint back on defense once the ball gets behind us, we don't want our full-court pressure to lead to their easy lay-ups.

Our next practice is not SUNDAY. Lora has 2 teams playing in a tournament this weekend and won't be available to get Edgewood High School for us, so our next practice will be WEDNESDAY APRIL 23RD. The time isn't finalized yet, but we're hoping around 7 pm or later, hopefully that way we can get a few more ladies there that have other sports, school or other responsibilities right after school lets out.

Finally, Lora is working through the details of getting us jersey's and shoes, she may resort to doing the order herself to make sure that we have everything we need in time for our tournament.

-Coach G

I forgot to mention

Parents: please add pictures you will be taking at our tournaments, game related or the girls enjoying the town we happen to be in that weekend.

Players: We only get one practice a week and I'd like your opinions on how you think things are going with our team. I know most of you have never played together before and I want to help as much as I can in the given time we have, so I want to hear what you have to say since we may not have a lot of time to address concerns or issues during our brief weekly practices. My email address is on this page if there is something you want to talk about directly instead of through a comment or post on the blog. Also, once we start having our games I will post blogs about my feelings on the games; what we did good, what we didn't do so good, and what we're going to do to address the problems we ran into.

Parents and player, I'm looking forward to this season, I think if we take our time on the offensive side of the ball, and play some stubborn defense, we'll be in good shape.

-Coach G

Blog intention

I started this blog as a place that I can quickly add news, schedules, and my opionions for the 15-16u Swing team. I will continue to link to the Wisconsin Swing web page whenever I'm making reference to schedules or any other information that can be found on their website. This page isn't meant to be an alternative to visiting the Swing site, but to be another tool for parents and players to communicate with me and be able to log onto quickly to see what is going on. Please feel free to leave and add comments to anything you're finding on this page. Like all blogs this is a work in progress and I'd be happy to take any of your suggestions on how I can improve this site to make your life easier when it comes to anything associated with your daughter's participation in the Wisconsin Swing.

Hopefully I'll see most of you tonight at practice, 4:30 at Keva.

-Coach G