High Level Competition

All 3 teams have played some very high level competition since we have been in Las Vegas and gained some valuable knowledge and experience. The Senior team has played against two of the top 15 teams in the country, Findlay Prep and Bishop Gorman, in the past couple of days. Findlay has 3 players that were on the USA U17 national team and 1 player that was on the Lithuanian U17 national team, all of which have Div.1 scholarships already and Bishop Gorman has the no. 2 ranked player in the country. The boys lost both games, but showed some positive signs playing both teams very tough much to the surprise of the opposing coaching staff. The Findlay coach expressed this to me after the game saying, "your boys play so hard and with such toughness, that's what our boys lack". I responded, "that's the aussie way". Even in these defeats, I saw the boys grow in confidence and believe that they can compete on this level. That really is the only thing that separates our boys (all 3 teams) from the competition, supreme self-confidence and the belief that they can play with anybody. Another bright spot in these defeats was that Div.1 scouts from University of Southern California, Oklahoma State and Northwestern University were at these games and inquired about some of our boys as well as Premier Ball (the No.1 recruiting service in the USA).

The BC1 and BC2 team had some great victories over the Bishop Gorman JV and Freshman teams, but lost to Impact Academy's Post Grad. and high school teams. These two teams have done quite well but I am a disappointed with the effort of some of the boys on these 2 teams and have been very forthcoming with them about this. In some of the games, they may have been outmatched in terms of athleticism and height, but that is still no excuse not to compete. We don't teach these boys to give up in the face of adversity and in some games that is exactly what happened. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. In these games, some of the boys seemed to be defeated before we even started, but were actually in the game and winning in some cases and the self-doubt crept in and the game was blown out. This is the biggest area of improvement across the board and something that will get better over the course of the Tour.