- The National 21&U 35-member squad took part in a one-week training camp last week under the guidance of head coach Simone Nalatu, specialist coach Joanne Morgan and assistance coach Vaiti Waqatabu.
Recently, the team had been working on court skills training with assistance coach and former Fiji Pearls player Vaiti Waqatabu.
Coach Nalatu is working closely with Vaiti in identifying key areas that all players are working on. Nalatu said that the 35-member selection was based on the ability of each player to execute under pressure.
“From my perspective we look at players that can execute repeatedly under pressure, and that was the message this week (last week) during the training camp, we need to be just as good in the first minute of the game as well as the last minute of the game,” said coach Nalatu.
“Coach Vaiti has done a fantastic job in building the skill set across the group, some of the fundamental skills like their footwork, passing, their ability to take the ball strongly and balanced, these are the fundamentals that we really need that base for.”
The one-week camp saw the three coaches work closely with all players, focusing on their ability to execute the fundamentals.
“We want our players to have that ability to make good decisions and make sure that we’re able to have those repeated efforts, can’t just be a one-off effort, they got to have to do that consistently and we want to make sure they’re reducing their error rate as well, and not giving away possessions.”
“We want them to do the little things right all of the time is really key criteria regardless of the position they play in.”
“What I’ve been able to do in this training camp is actually apply some structures that you wouldn’t be able to do without knowing all these fundamentals they’ve been working on, like our defensive center pass structure we can’t do it if we don’t have good footwork, and if we don’t have the ability to get ourselves into good positions.”
Former Australian Diamonds shooter Joanne Morgan also played a key role during the camp, working alongside Nalatu and Waqatabu to develop the Baby Pearls shooters.
