Today was the first actual day of the Canadian Jr National team tryout.
We had meetings in the morning and early afternoon. We went over things such as offense, defense, and team dynamics.
Then the afternoon came around.
4:00 fitness testing.
I first thought this was just going to be the ‘beep test’, but it was more, way more.
We got special wrist bands, which identified us, and then had various spring, sprint/dribbling, pushups, vertical jump, and squat tests.
It was a whole new experience! I didn’t do so well on the pushup test, I find I’m much stronger in my lower body than my upper body. However, when the squat test rolled around the trainer made us ‘dip’ so much lower than I had ever been trained to do! It was so low! But once I got my technique figured I was able to work my way up to squatting 175lbs! I was pretty excited.
Then the beep test. I am not friends with the beep test… Yet. But, after all the workouts we had just done I pushed myself to get a 7.9, which isn’t great … But I beat my previous score of 6, quite a jump of improvement!
We then had 1.5 hours of practice where we went over mainly defense, team defense, and played a lot of ‘three on three’ and ‘four on four’. I felt myself adapting to the new level of play, and improvements were happening.
It was a good start so far. I finished the day with an ice bath just to keep my body healthy for this long camp.
Funny thing, they actually used cattle troughs as ice baths, so I felt right at home.
Tomorrow is going to come quick, but this is a great chance for me to get better, learn lots, and represent myself, my country, and even my small town of Houston.
Time to dream of boxing out and crashing the boards!
