Blank Slate #2

This is a follow up to The Blank Slate #1. That has the gist for what I’m doing with “Blank Slate” posts this fall.

I tried to follow the teaching procedure explained to coaches out at the USMC MCMAP grounds in Quantico. Basically, that goes–minimum verbal explanation necessary followed ASAP with the hands-on aspect of the lesson. So when we did our explanations, we kept those to three minutes or less before throwing our FES into our practices.

We started with serving and a hitting armswing since FES has had past experience playing squash. This was also done because our objective is to get FES skilled enough for us to get her into competition. Serving is a self-controlled skill while hitting is an end-result, reducing pressure on FES regarding being a first or second contact during play.

We started with her throwing the ball. Then we had her toss it to herself and start swinging. Shortly after, we noted she had to make sure it went over the net which would be ten meters away (I use civilized measurement systems with our FES) and suggested she ‘aim higher’ with the ball. Using the wall as the net, she was able to hit an ‘in’ serve on her fifth attempt. A few minutes later, she was up to a 50-60% success rate. Good enough for government work!

At that point, we put her into our speedball and 6v6 drills serving *AND* in the front row where we instructed the setters to make sure to set her as much as anyone else. When set directly to where she was standing, she was able to hit over the net/understood the bio-mechanics of it and without coach intervention or instruction, she began moving her feet in order to take a step into the ball.

This was an interesting point–because the other players were giving her constant feedback and pointers…explaining why you take approaches, timing the approach, and then jumping to hit. They also explained that if she isn’t confident, that a tip is perfectly acceptable–which she then started trying though currently, FES’s tips remain more of a throw than a tip, but there’s improvement for sure.

Now, though, we have less practice time available since matches start on 21 August (this post is being written on 19 August). Now we will have only 2-3 practices per week. That will make improvement a bit more difficult with other skills–though as FES’s hitting improved, she has been observing on her own passing and setting and started working on those skills.

I’m hoping/expecting we’ll see continued improvement over the course of the season.