If your netball tournament finals are just around the corner, as a coach, you must be wondering how to prepare your game plan and strategies to motivate your team to give their best performance in the field. Should you concentrate on keeping your team’s morale high or, you instead try and figure out the weak points in the opponent team? There is no definite rule for this, but you can consider the following tips to prepare yourself well for the netball competition.
Do Warm-ups
The tournament is a long and gruelling sports event. The youngsters high on energy can be a little too much, and they might feel tired or suffer from acute exhaustion and stiffness occasionally. Because of this, players are required to make a point to warm-up before each game as this ensures that the players are ready to tackle the challenges of the match. Having said that, we also need to remember that too much of warm-up does more harm than good, and you don’t want your team to get bogged down under the stress of excessive workout before a match in the netball competition. It would help if you kept the warm-up time-limited to 15 minutes.
As the day begins, your players should do a proper warm-up, and for the rest of the day, they can do five-minute warm-ups, including ball drills, stretching, and jogging. Not only does this get the limbs moving, but it has a psychological effect as well, as players enter that game mode which can get switched off between the games in the netball competition.
Try to Gain an Early Momentum
Netball games consist of two halves of 6-10 minutes duration. If you fall behind by three or four goals in the first half, it isn’t easy to bounce back in the match again to recover from that. There is not enough time left in the second half to make a comeback, and when the opposing team gains momentum, it is hard to outperform them by scoring some quick goals. Because of this, you can play aggressive early and try to score so that your team gains that much-needed early momentum. While this does not guarantee a win, the speed can carry your team forward for the rest of the match and can certainly increase their chances of winning.
Concentrate on your strong points
When it comes to a netball competition, you should employ new tactics from the blue that your team may not be familiar with. There are numerous scenarios in the game because of which you might want to hone new skills and drills, but it might cause a lot of confusion and leave the players dumbfounded while taking a toll on their confidence level.
For the finals, you should stick to the drills that have previously been successful and that you know your team can execute with ease. Performing well at the exercises will also boost the players’ confidence while failing to learn a new move can be demotivating for them.
Learn from your mistakes
As a coach, you know what mistakes your team made in the netball competition’s last game. It might be that the defence was not good enough to hinder the movement of players of the opposition, or someone was slightly out of position. You can suggest some minor changes in strategy that would help fix the gaps.
Players should Concentrate on improving these areas by not repeating the same mistake once again in the next big game of the netball competition. Furthermore, it would help if you did not try to cover everything in a short time, but rather stick to the major areas. You can also ask the players if something they feel is not working out and how they would like to do it differently.
While preparing for the netball tournament, it is important to get the right amount of practice and work as a team. A coach needs to be honest with their team and constantly keep them on their toes to get the best out of them.
