Yesterday, I was pretty impressed with the shooting sports school. Well, I visited the provincial training centre which goes up several notches. This facility, built in 1999 and handed over to the provincial shooting and archery teams, is big enough to host a world cup. Its not as big as Munich, but certainly about the same size as Milan.
The facility is a bit run down, but it gets back to my comments yesterday: its isn't about the amenities. This facility has EVERYTHING a shooting team needs. The air range has 40 positions set up with electronic returning paper targets, with about another 35-40 empty positions (just benches). The 50m range has approx. 36 bays set with paper targets (changed by staff in butts, on radio command), plus another 24 bays not in use. Well, the bays are closed and there are table tennis tables, plus a pool table and weights in the area. There are about 6-8 25m 5-target bays available, with paper targets scored by staff downrange.
Here's the kicker: 11 athletes in the 40+ position air range, 8 athletes in the 50m range and about 7 athletes in the 25m range. This facility is grossly under utilized.
We spent the day talking with our friend, Coach Li (former director of the facility), plus his proteges, as well as the archery coach and a few other people. Lots of information was exchanged, as well as an invitation.
Next year,I can bring a group of archers and shooters to train here assuming that I can find the right mix of talent and work ethic over the next 6 months. Now, that isn't a knock against anybody, but, these guys are good. And they train hard, anywhere up to 5 hours a day, 6 days a week. As a male AP shooter, you need to be shooting 570/600 for consideration. Also, if you can't dryfire hundreds (not 100 or 200, but 300-400) of shots in a 4-5 hour period, then you won't keep up. Essentially, we need to train our athletes, before we can send them for training with the Chinese provincial team.
By the way, how well do they shoot? There was a test match today. The top four full-time athletes (as opposed to the 7 part-time non-resident athletes) shot 588, 586, 586 and 575 respectively. Their finals weren't as good, because the foreigner (me!!!!) watching sort of rattled them. Note: one of these guys beat Pan Wei (Olympic Gold Medalist a couple of weeks ago) at the Chinese Nationals, but wasn't chosen for the Olympic team due to a lack of national training experience. Yep, shot a 588 and wasn't selected for the National team. So, Canada needs to bring together its best and brightest if we want to put up a good showing and gain from the experience.
So, after two days discussing coaching with the various Jiao Lien (Mandarin for 'coach'), I've got a pile of notes which confirm a lot of my thoughts and answer a lot of questions. Now, I just need to get home and map all of this out. My brain hurts, but I am very pleased.
(And no, Richard, I'm not rejuvenated. I'm currently at a hotel which has reasonable all-you-can -drink coffee. That works for now.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I've sort of came to the same conclusion and talked with Prakash about it We are to focused on retention more so than training. We worry about keeping it fun, which isn't improving our junior athletes. When I competed in sports practice and training was tough, you learned something the fun part was the game and doing well because you put the hard work in. The shooters must have the intrinsic motivation to work and work hard, if not there's not much a coach can do.
Can you take an assistant coach with you next year? I guess first we have to find some shooters that are willing to work to shoot 570 +.
This year the juniors are going to learn the enjoyment of dry firing too, if it's the only thing I do.
Post a Comment