OPILLY SQUAD NOTES
January 15
Brittany, Emily, and Amanda, good luck at the TFG Invite! The three of you will work with Coach Lois for the rest of this week, and she, Nick, and Dan are travelling to the meet. Soyon and I are staying here to keep everyone else in top shape. All three of you are very prepared. In fact, I think all the Topo girls are going to put everyone else to shame. Have a great time!
For the rest of us, it's training as usual. Well, almost. We are getting two girls from Pop squad while Nick is away, Brooke Star and Marie Franetti. Let's make sure they have a good time, ok? I realize that Opilly squad is superior to Pop in every way, but perhaps it would be best if we didn't point that out any more than four or five times a day.
Coach Lois wanted me to pass on the message that no one is allowed to be too upset about not getting to go to Texas. The schedule is filled with invitationals and other opportunities to compete, and right now it seems that the whole gym is on fire. Everyone is really doing a fabulous job in training and it was incredibly difficult for us to choose a team to send to Texas. Several people just barely missed out.
- Mike
January 11
Hello Opilly Squad! I'm Michael, your coach, as I'm sure you all know. I'm very excited to have such a talented group of athletes to work with.
I'm sure you've all read and studied the lovely bio sheets that Coach Driedle passed around, so you know I have Chinese ancestry. I love China and I love Chinese gymnastics, and I'm afraid that if you do not enjoy working very hard to do beautiful gymnastics you will find me terribly annoying. I don't expect that you will all be ballerinas, but it is my goal to make you look very poised and polished even if you don't want to have a traditionally balletic floor routine or beam routine. Bars is Nick's domain, but I'll get to work with the six of you on bars, and I will tell you now that I love very straight handstands, long lines, and a clean swing. Those are the things I'll be stressing over and over again. I'm not much of a vaulting specialist, but I'll try my best there as well. Many of you are doing very difficult vaults, and I'm very impressed and maybe even intimidated, but I've also noticed that sometimes the extra difficulty comes at the price of good form. Maybe we can work on this.
So that's the abbreviated version of my coaching philosophy. If Coach Drielde asks, you can tell her I told you what to expect from me. Beyond the workouts, though, I'm hoping you girls will bond as a squad. My wife, Soyon, has this great fear that all of you girls are going to start competing with one another and we're going to have a stressful environment, and I suppose there's some truth to that. So anytime you girls want to do any sort of team bonding thing, or if you have something you need to talk about, come see me and we'll figure it out. I'm excited to be working with you, and I hope you'll be patient with me. :?)
Opilly Coach Michael Klacie
Individual Notes, regarding the intersquad and general workouts:
Brittany Maddux:
You have great power on all of your events, but I'd love to see more elegant movement. You have strong basics and you're quite flexible, so I see great potential. At the intersquad, vault was the problem, and I am afraid that you are letting this develop into a mental block. I feel like you're holding back more than you were last week, so we'll work on this.
You did very well on bars, and you have a very solid routine. I'd like first of all to maybe add some difficulty and bring up the start value. I also want to work with you on form, as I mentioned to the group.
You are doing well on beam and floor. You have good routines with plenty of difficulty. We need to do many repetitions, clean up some form, and maybe a little bit of technique, but you have a very strong start.
