A Growing Family 2/27/2012

As we go into our eighth week of full time training we are seeing some big gains with the overall conditioning level. This past week was a very tough one and the team responded well. We stepped up the level of work and the team rose to the challenge and trained hard through it. In a way it is like running a marathon - as we go through these weeks of training many of our athletes will “hit a wall” of fatigue and have to make a choice –do I ease back on the throttle and give my body rest? Or do I challenge myself and push through this to break through the wall and rise to a new level of fitness and perhaps performance? For the most part, that is our job as coaches, to find a way to help encourage and coax our athletes to work through this tough spots and get pushing their bodies to new levels. Of course, there is a fine line between breaking them down too much and risking injury and pushing them through the pain of being fatigued. Staying in touch with each athlete and keeping up with “their reality” is a big part of this. For example, I always try to find out what is going on personally with any of the guys when I see them not performing at their best. Chances are that there is something going on outside the pool that may be impacting their performance in the pool. This takes communication and trust. I feel that is building and getting better and better on this team. We certainly had it working well in 2008, when we made it to the gold medal game and won the silver medal. However, with most of the team playing professionally over in Europe for the past three years the level of trust, respect and communication has dropped off a bit. Perhaps not much but a little bit. We are working to get that back. It will come with time together. I feel that much of it lies on our shoulders as coaches. We must trust and respect our athletes and we must work to communicate with them everyday. As we do this then trust, respect and open communication will begin to flow back to us. This is where team chemistry takes it roots and begins to grow. It is exciting to be a part of it again. I can sense that this is happening and I know all to well that only when these elements are deeply rooted will we have the foundation we need to make it back to that gold medal game this summer in London.

This week could be very interesting outside the pool too. Jeff Powers and Adam Wright are both expecting babies very soon. For Adam and his wife it will be their second child. While Jeff and his wife are expecting their first babies (twins). So our family continues to grow. This team is amazing! They have been through so much together and now many of them are balancing families with all we are doing to prepare for London. The majority of them have played together since they were on the USA Junior team. That means that many of these guys have been together for 12-15 years. That is pretty incredible in a sport like ours where for the most part the athletes are playing to represent their country and possibly win a gold medal for the USA. Our average age is 31-32 years old. We could be the oldest team in the Olympic Games. I feel honored to be a part of this team. It is a special group and we have one more step up the podium to realize all of our dreams.

As far as upcoming events go here is the schedule. For those that may be interested in seeing some good water polo – we will be having “Competition Wednesday” each Weds night at Oaks Christian. Scrimmages begin at approximately 7:45 and our open to the public. If you are interested in watching the team got through their warm up then get there at about 7:15. Fans are welcome and there is no charge. We will be hosting Italy, Montenegro and Germany at the end of next month. We will be having a small four nation tournament at CLU the weekend of March 23rd, 24th and 25th. Stay tuned for more information on this tournament.

That is it for now. See you at the pool.

Coach

London Visit 2/9/12

I just returned from London where I was involved in a pre Olympic orientation with our team leader Rick McKee. The USOC and the London Organizing Committee partnered together to put the event on. It was pretty much a whirlwind trip. We left early Monday morning and arrived in London early Tuesday morning and we returned home Thursday afternoon. It was two full days of meetings and traveling around the city to see the venues, the village and other key Olympic sites.

Here are a few of my thoughts from the trip. Upon arrival at 5 am we were told that the bus to the hotel was coming at 8 am (due to other flights with coaches and team leaders arrival times). Five of us decided to be brave and head to the hotel on the Tube. This is London’s underground subway which connects the entire city very well. We bought our Oyster passes (the passes needed to right the subway and light rail system) and headed out on our adventure. The tube was fairly empty until we got closer to town and then it began to get a bit interesting. We had to change lines three times and take a bus at the end of the journey. One of our traveling mates missed a connection because the particular tram was too full and she almost was crushed in the as the door closed. So beware travelers - move quickly and without hesitation. These trams do not wait for you. We waited for her at the next stop and she was able to catch the next train to catch up. After about an hour and a half of traveling we reached the Hilton Docklands Hotel where all the participants were staying. We beat the bus by about a full two hours so it was well worth the adventure.

As soon as the bus arrived with the remaining participants we went to work. The first day was consisted of a quick orientation and then we were off to visit our respective venues and various sites. It was very cold… yikes - this is the summer Games right?. There was snow on the ground and it would snow later that evening. Of course, being from Southern California I did not bring the winter jacket and was quite cold for most of the trip. We first went to the Aquatics center which was amazing. It seats 17,500 people and was very nice. Right next to the Aquatics center is the water polo venue. Unfortunately, due to all the construction going on we were not able to go inside and view our venue. We saw it from the outside and it looks pretty cool but it would have been nice to see it and feel it a bit more. The water polo venue will seat 5,000 fans and there are two pools inside. One for competition and one for training and warm ups.

Most all of the venues are part of the Olympic park and very close together. There is construction going on all over the town. I did not see a lot of people working but perhaps it was due to the weather. But there is a great deal of work that still needs to be done. From the Aquatics Center and the Water Polo venue the Olympic Village is about a ten minute walk. There is a loop that goes around the Olympic Park and you can ride a shuttle that makes the entire loop in about 10 minutes. After viewing what we could see from the outside of the water polo venue, we went to the Village and saw the apartments where team USA will stay during the games. There was no furniture in the building but we at least were able to visualize what the living arrangements would be like.


The rest of the day consisted of traveling around town to visit sites such as where team processing will occur, the USA House and UEL Docklands. UEL is the University of East London. This is where team USA will make its home outside of the village. There will be home cooked meals, meeting rooms, medical and a fitness center. Unfortunately, there is no pool on campus so it will be a bit different than in Beijing where we had a dedicated pool to use and did not have to worry about the scheduled training sessions that often leave you frustrated with not enough time. I guess there are just not that many pools in London that can be used for water polo so we are going to have figure that part out. The evening ended with a nice reception with the mayor of London at Canada One square - which is a very nice financial district in town. We then went to dinner and finally arrived back at the hotel around 11 pm. We were all exhausted and went to bed immediately.

Day two consisted of sleeping in… which was greatly appreciated and then spending the afternoon in meetings with the LOCOG people (London Organizing Committee), key people from the USOC, people from Ralph Lauren (we got a sneak peak at the Opening Ceremonies outfits which are highly secretive) and Nike (saw the podium outfits – once again highly secretive). It was a good afternoon filled with lots of helpful information of everything we need to know about the Games.

More than anything it made me very excited to actually see and feel what London is going to be like in a few short months. I come home with a whole new level of excitement and realization that this is all going to happen so quickly. Time to get back to work with the team…

Hopefully things will warm up a bit in London before the summer… it is actually suppose to be in the low 80’s during that time of the year so it should be very pleasant. The journey accelerates from here. Our job is to stay focused and keep the team focused on doing what we need to do to prepare one day at a time. We are working hard. Robert and Marco held down the fort and took the guys through another grueling week of practice. I will rejoin them today.

See you at the pool.

Coach