Embarking on a new coaching adventure

Well here we go again. The Coaching group for the Australian u19 open team have been decided and we are starting the process of planning the team preparation for the World Junior Ultimate Championships in Germany, August 2010.

For those who are not tied into coaching in Australian ultimate, I use the term decided because the coaches are determined by application to the Australian Flying Disc Association, which has an appointment panel that determines who gets to run the show. This time the appointment panel chose the Head Coach (I am the lucky person who got that job) and I managed to involve everybody who wanted to be involved into a very large group of volunteers. It is a good group too. :-) I am hoping that you will hear from all of them in this blog too.

We are a large group of volunteers embarking on running a professional preparation for a national team. We have variable experience and education (coaching that is) and for many of us this is a step into the unknown as we put together a program for Thunder. We will be learning to work together, learning each others strengths and focussing on creating a really great team for WJUC 2010. For me, this is a new experience, as I am aiming to bring together larger and much more experienced team than before. I will be handing large chunks of the program over to these talented coaches - to make a better program. I am constantly reminded of the quote below as I take a new step into unknown territory. You better believe that neither I or my team are cold, dead or timid. :-)

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt.