question answered

Anonymous said...

Kim, thanks for the updates. Even in last years blog, I felt embarrassed about the travel arrangments that the team is required to undertake (wearing all your clothes to make the one bag limit, etc.) Is this one of the parts of being on the national team that need to continue to improve to retain our best players? I know that former players like to talk about travel stories, and that putting up with it is a badge of honour, but I want our players to be able to concentrate on grabbing rebounds instead of grabbing their bags. You all know players on other National teams - do they travel better or differently than our SWNT? Would the Chinese be more comfortable playing/staying in Prince George for example, than we are in Beijing?

Thanks for the question, love hearing from everyone. Well where to start. I know most people are extremely envious of our lives and professions and sometimes we on the inside lose perspective about how awesome we have it. Yes it would be nice to make NBA money or travel like team USA to an event but we do have it really good. The bag thing was an issue last year because many of us left for our European clubs immediately following worlds. It is hard enough living out of one bag for a month add a whole season to that and it becomes near impossible. It would be great to go back to the day where airlines were a little more lenient on bag weight.

In terms of travel, training and time commitments yeah we do lag behind some of our competition. But like most things in business it's about money. When we travel to many of these tournaments our arrangements are made by the host organization. We don't have a lot of control over much of it. We do know that many teams travel and train under better circumstances but their federations also have more money to spend. In the past we have tried to host tournaments but we don't have the money and resources that other countries spend on their basketball.

There are many ideas floated around to maybe better our circumstances. I would like to see us try to bring in some new sponsors to work with. I would like to get more local youth teams involved with our training camps. I would love to play more games on Canadian soil. But right now we don't have enough resources and manpower to make many of these things possible.

In the meantime we have learned how to laugh at long bus rides, bag weight limits, and interesting hotels. We embrace playing on the road relishing the opportunities to become a closer and a mentally tougher team.