Saturday, August 29, 2009

Thoughts on Pre season

Firstly, I would like to thank all of the teams involved. I believe it was the most competitive pre season classic in the state. All 4 teams; Berkeley Prep (3A) , Ft.Myers (4A), Venice (5A), Plant (6A) have a legitimate shot to win their classification. I would also like to thank all of you who came out to support the Indians. We had an almost packed gym for the Plant/Venice game for a pre season contest!
Secondly, I believe Pre season is a great time to experiment with new things, play tough competition to see your teams weaknesses, and get a feel for where your team is at in general. We could have easily scheduled easy competition and won outright but we would have a false sense of security of how good our team really is. Its like I told the team yesterday (before I gave them their 1st day off since we began) that we do not have to play the State Championship this week.
We have many things to work on throughout the season but all a coach can really ask of his team is that they care and work hard. We DEFINITELY have that on our 2009 team. It was very obvious how much better we played from Tuesdays game to Thursdays. We cut our unforced errors in half because we were much more disciplined.
I am looking forward to the regular season starting next week. We have a full week. The varsity opens up at Braden River on Tuesday which I think will be one of the most competitve teams in the area and that is why I wanted to play them. Former district foe, Southeast will be at home on Wednesday with an early start of 5:00, and then we will travel to Sarasota Riverview on Thursday. This will be an exciting game for a few reasons. 1) Venice and RHS will renew a rivalry match bc these two teams have not played in quite a few years 2) RHS has one of the most talented players in the area with Bree Scarbrough and 3) This match will be the 1st ever athletic contest in the New Riverview gym so I am sure it will be filled to capacity and we need the Venice supporters and the Wheatley Wackos to show up in their Forest Green apparrel.

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