Talking Split

If there’s one thing almost every coach wants (other than LeBron James on their team), it’s more training time. When we have it how do we use it to our fullest potential? If we don’t have it, what are some of the things that we can do to still improve our athletes? We look at some of the off court work that is done by our VNPP athletes on a weekly basis, and what coaches can do to have the most amount of impact with their athletes in a short amount of time.

Coops and Ash in this week, as we look at pathways for players and coaches, do they exist, and if so, what are they? Does winning, necessarily equate to career progression? Coops drops names all over the place, and we get involved in a bit of “story time” that Ash is furious about being left out on. Jack Fleming’s coaching website we discuss can be found here: https://medium.com/@flemingjack1995

The First 7 Months – Metro Edition: Last week we heard from our Country crew, and now it’s Metro’s turn to look over the new program from their perspective. Jenni has finally turned and become Victorian and Ash enlightens us as to what he’s doing to be better at admin. Hint: Not much. We discuss the takeaways from the January tournaments, U20 Nationals and the history of hating the Victorians!

Like Netflix re-booting Full House, Basketball Victoria have re-booted Talking Split! Instead of John Stamos & Lori Loughlin, we’ve got the High-Performance Coaches for Victoria Country. Nathan Cooper-Brown and Zoe Carr take us through the new High-Performance program in Victoria, and how it impacts the athletes in the Country areas.  We also discuss Country Cup, Southern Cross Challenge, and the U20 Nationals.

We head out to speak to Dr.Bridie O'Donnell from Change Our Game about the work her department is doing and what more can be done to encourage female participation in the coaching landscape. Talking Split then talks to a special panel of guests - Dr.Julia Walsh (Deakin University), Megan Moody (BVC & Bendigo) and Zoe Carr (Knox Raiders), about their experiences in coaching and the pathways they've taken to get to this stage in their coaching.

Fresh off some social media posts with "player development" concepts, the team go over their thoughts on what player development looks like for our junior athletes, and what training sessions should be made up of. Mike sends out a call to arms for junior competitions, and we congratulate our former co-host Justin on his appointment with the U15 Australian Men. We are on a break for school holidays, and there might be some big changes when we return...

We are back and have the privilege of being joined by Australian basketball royalty - Australian Opal, WNBL and WNBA star Michele Timms jumps in to talk about her extensive playing career around the world, and also her coaching pathway in China and now back in Australia.  Michele also had the unenviable task of being the landlord of a former co-host of the show, what are the chances of some late payments being made?

We've doubled down this week and after looking at the Perfect Athlete last week... we set our sights on at what traits would make the Perfect Coach for athletes, with a few real world examples along the way. There are a lot of things all coaches can work on in their own time that can help themselves and their athletes in the future.

You read that title and immediately think of the Talking Split crew (or half of it anyway), but we are talking about what are the most important traits for our athletes to have if they're going to succeed as a High Performance athlete.  For each of the traits we give a NBL and WNBL player comparison that we feel best exhibits that trait. (Hint: Schueller didn't make the cut with the shooting trait comparison...)

With Justin now on other duties, the team has reached out to the academic field and recruited Dr. Adam Gorman! In this episode, the Talking Split team and Dr. Gorman will talk about skill acquisition in junior athletes and what coaches can do to help develop athletes and improve their skill bases and decision-making skills.