Fiji Pearls specialist coach Yvette McCausland-Durie was impressed with the players attitude and willingness to learn and improve during the one week training camp that concluded last weekend.
Yvette’s first assignment as a specialist coach was the one week training camp with the Fiji Pearls extended squad. The Te Wananga O Raukawa Pulse head coach went straight to business by assessing the players, taking note of the rhythm of play on court, individual skill sets, and players conditioning.
The Fiji Pearls were zoned in from day one of the training camp and it was obvious to Yvette how focused and determined these girls were beginning of the camp.
“The things I’m most impress with is really good coachability, these players are so open to learning and putting things into practice, the willingness is there to work for each other and support each other,” said Yvette.
Yvette had no intention of changing the style or rhythm of play the Pearls are know for in fact she aims to hone it up and help further develop the skills they already have.
“I just want to learn about each players and understand how they want to play the game their way, and I’ll just try and compliment that skill set they already got, just keep encouraging them to be confident which is a challenge but with confidence they’ll continue to grow,” added Yvette.
Players conditioning was a key factor she noticed that was lacking from the team, she reiterated that the skill level was there and added that without proper conditioning it’ll be tough for the player to compete at a high level tournament.
“Conditioning wise I think we need to be better to survive a tough tournament, we’re really clear to play at next level but we just need to make sure conditioning wise we can sustain so good opportunity going ahead and we’ve got 4 more camps to go,” said Yvette.
For a team to be successful Yvette strongly believes that it comes down to a group of individuals to own their job, “so its about role clarity and the ability for a player to own their job and when you’ve got that then you’ve really contributed to the collective and that ability to create a really good team performance,” she added.
Yvette concluded that she’ll be looking at this combination, how well the players execute their own job and how they put that into the team environment which will be the main focus during the pre world cup training camps.
