Carly Clarke Optimistic About 2013 Cadette Hopefuls

On December 22, 2012, we caught up with Carly Clarke, at the U16 Cadette Women’s National Age Group Assessment Camp in Toronto, ON to find out her thoughts on how she felt things went.

“Its always interesting to see a new group and remember how young they are when they come in”, said the 2012 summer U17 Cadette Team Coach that led her team to Canada’s best ever finish at a FIBA world competition (Bronze). “I think there are some great pieces, there are some exciting players and there’s been some good things happening all week that are exciting for the future.”

Aside from getting many of Canada’s finest in the gym at the same time, the purpose of the camp was to not only assess skillset. Aside from teaching and training, it was also to the ready the hopefuls for what they will need to do in order to prepare for the eventual tryout in the Spring.

“I think that the ultimate goal of the camp is to teach the young athletes the level that they need to train at, and understand the intensity and the different facets that are associated with becoming a National Team athlete. So, we’ve been working on teaching them those things all week. And, we’re trying to give them feedback that they can take away, and work on things so that when it comes tryout time for the official tryout in the Spring, that they’re as prepared as possible. It’s an exciting time that at Canada Basketball that we are now able to do this, this far in advance.”

So now that the camp is complete, now what? At the top of the list is for Canada Basketball to solidify the Coaching staff. Although Clarke is the incumbent Head Coach and oversaw a lot of the direction of the drills in this Camp, that official decision is still up in the air. Andre Desjardins, Jodi Gram, and Agnes Borg were all Assistants on Clarke’s staff back in August. Each were in the mix in some capacity during this camp, and will likely factor in on the final decision as to who will be on the staff to guide the Cadettes in 2013.

Regardless, Clarke believes that a similar game plan to the one used last year will be exercised this go-round, in terms of player preparation of working on specific skills.

“Certainly last year we did some individual athlete monitoring amongst the coaching staff. We had all of our athletes divided up and we were communicating with them regularly. I think that had great benefits and we saw some great progress in their development with that.”

A March or April timeframe in 2013 has been given as a timeframe for the official tryouts, where skill improvements, cohesion and gameplay will all be factored into the decision of the 12 players that will ultimately make the roster and represent their country.