Evaluating my First Netball Season

My first official season coaching has just ended. I've learned a lot about netball, a game I'd never seen before our first game at Sports Day in KL. Coaching was a great experience, but an honest evaluation of "lessons learned" will remind me what to do in the future should another coaching opportunity ever arise...

Here are some things that players just had to learn the hard way...

1) Wear shoes (or flip flops, as a bare minimum) to run on the grass field. All my talking did not have an impact, but dog poop squishing between their toes at the last practice hopefully did.

2) Cut finger nails and remove their jewelry BEFORE the game. My English isn't understood but a referee's  sending girls in search of nail clippers and watching their bibs be given to the non-starters 30 seconds before the start is.

3) Demonstrate the "No substitutions until the end of the quarter" rule.  Next time I need to explain that it doesn't mean that players can walk off the court, stand on the side, keep their bib,  and watch the other six players hustle because they are tired.

4) Tell captains that they are not the coaches during the game. Even though I'd asked the captains to help analyse the players and positions during practice,  it doesn't mean they can walk up to a usually-good-but-super-jet-lagged-player and exchange bibs with them in the middle of a quarter. After all, I wanted to feel needed as the coach.

On the positive side, here are some things I did OK and would probably repeat next year...

1) Tell the players that they can only say positive words and not criticize their teammates during the game. They girls got the immediate benefit of this rule when they saw and heard one of the other coaches call her players "stupid idiots" with some Bahasa swear words sprinkled in. My players felt bad for the other girls.

2) Tell the players they will probably make some mistakes because nobody is perfect, but that they shouldn't focus on the mistakes. Instead, they should take a mental photo of the things they do well and just keep repeating them. I think our goal attack really got this message. Her shot percentage was 75%  scoring 3 of our 4 goals.

3) Remind players to have fun. I think they did. Look at the smiles on their faces after their first win...