Thanks Tim Cowell
A fleeting trip to Geraldton, some personal commitments meant not being able to stay for the Geraldton Open.
I travelled up on the Tuesday with the first session a coaching development session with the junior club coaches. I introduced a few of our new tools we are currently working with at our program in Cambridge, with a few of those flowing into the youth program as well. A refocus on some of the simpler technique aspects of the grip and a balanced stance. We went through a couple of tweaks to the WSC tools and where some of them can be applied really well, such as a different way of remembering the grip and using radar / 2 hands to impact the ball. In order to hit with two straight arms, it challenges to players to get their feet into position and to impact it on the front foot.
Type of balls were a big topic and encouraged them to use the bouncier versions for a number of activities. Prolonging rallies was one, to improve court awareness. We introduced the ‘manual ball machine’ method, of dropping the balls onto a racquet on the ground for simple hitting to a target area. The ball would rebound higher off the strings of the racquet placed on the floor.
Another activity we introduced was getting them to play a rally by throwing the ball only. The early rallies were short but once they figured out their movement and their strategy, the kids were having a heap of fun and getting a good work out! We started to see this translate into their proper rallies with racquets.
Due to the high school cancelling, we only had two school visits, Waggrakine PS and Bluff Point PS. Great to get back to both schools and introduce them to squash. Sounded like there was a bit of interest so hopefully the club picks up some new members.
A big thanks to the club for rounding of some keen members to jump in for some private lessons. We saw some good improvement in movement, accuracy and strategy chats across the various sessions.
Leave a Reply