Junior WAVES Coaches’ Update — Week 8 — 2021/2022

A weekly update from Coach Rodrigo and Coach Fraser

Save the date: December 4, 2021. We are planning an event for that day. More details to come.

Swimming

The second annual Wave-a-thon turned out to be yet another great success and I was so proud of our Jnr Waves participation.

Our athletes surprised not only themselves but their parents and fans up in the stands with how much they have improved over the past 7 weeks and how far that they could actually swim. Some of our swimmers will be ready for some open water events in the Summer of 2022 — that was how confident they looked in the water!

We are now in the second major cycle of our training plan and we’re going to be increasing distances at practices and adding more backstroke and breaststroke.

From a coaching perspective, the biggest hurdle is differentiating the strokes required for swimming and for water polo. Water polo requires explosive strokes over 2 – 5 metres while swimming is in for the large haul and requires longer strokes.

Please keep the chocolate milk flowing, they are going to need it.

Water Polo

Much of the excitement about Wave-a-thon spilled over into our water polo practices as well.  A good game of “egg-beater Simon-says” was in order to focus the young minds and channel all their energy. We continue to add more skills every week, this week we focused on dry passes and transitioning from swimming with a ball to shooting the ball.

A few reminders

• Label your equipment! Coach Fraser will have a white marker at practices.
• Every athlete must have their necessary equipment at all practices. Consider getting a mesh bag so that your swimmer can bring all equipment to the pool deck.
• Lastly, let the coaches know of any absences at coach@capitalwave.ca. It is important so they can plan ahead.

Quotables

I like quotes for inspiration. Sometimes I will put them on the board at practice and sometimes I get my quotes from the athletes.