Perth Orioles coach Sue Gaudion explains her approach to team management.
WABN: What techniques do you use to motivate players?
SG: ‘‘I don’t know if I would call these techniques, but I believe that providing a challenging and competitive training environment for both the individual and the team, along with a strong club culture is a huge key to a player’s motivation.’’
WABN: What is the best piece of advice you can give someone who wants to motivate a team?
SG: ‘‘Be motivated yourself! Players feed from the atmosphere of the environment. If you are the leader, then lead by example.’’
WABN: What has been the biggest mistake that you have made in your role as a coach and what did you learn from it?
SG: ‘‘Allowing the frustrations of my day to enter a training and game environment. I realised that when you mould your team according to your plan, and the players trust you and follow that plan accordingly, they can be easily affected by your negative energy.’’
WABN: What other profession do you most often seek advice from with respect to you team’s performance and why?
SG: ‘‘Certainly from our physiotherapist, who works closely with the team. We must have a very open and trusting relationship. Most coaches and players at an elite level will push every boundary possible to ensure maximum time is spent both at training and in a game. Our physio must be the one who calls the ‘hard line’ as to a player’s ability to play or not based on their injury.
‘‘I also have a close working relationship with our strength and conditioning coach. If I want a player to be stronger, more powerful or quicker, then I rely on this specialised area and the knowledge and skills of this coach to assist in these goals.’’
WABN: How do you manage player egos?
SG: ‘‘Just make sure that mine is always bigger! ’’
WABN: How do you manage off-field player conflicts?
SG: ‘‘The best answer to the management of off-field conflicts is to ensure that they never enter the training and game environment. I don’t ask my players to be best friends, but I do ask them to respect each other.’’
WABN: What currently frustrates you about your sport?
SG: ‘‘The greatest frustration I currently have about netball is that our elite netballers, those who play for Australia and those that play in our national league still have to manage full-time work or studies to support their talent.
WABN: How important is it for players to develop skills outside of their sport? What do you do to encourage it?
SG: ‘‘Holistic athletes, in my opinion, are the greatest achievers. They learn that a balance in life is a key ingredient to success.
All Perth Orioles athletes are full-time workers or students. Unfortunately the balance is still not quite right – too much of one and not enough of the other. As I mentioned before, our sport is not yet fortunate to be able to support the players more financially so that they can increase their training load and somewhat decrease their work and study load.’’
WABN: Describe your preferred outdoor-based training session.
SG: ‘‘Well, so far the most rewarding outdoor session the Perth Orioles have had in season 2007 was our distance time trials. I just love to see athletes push themselves and others, to beat their personal best times and to impress their coaches.
‘‘Time trial was done at Lake Monger around the lake at Wembley. The distance was 1.6 kilometres and the best time was five minutes 19 seconds by Cath Devitt (centre court player).
‘‘I always found that the most rewarding training session – for conditioning – that I did as an athlete was the ‘fartlek’; a Swedish term meaning ‘speed play’. It's the type of workout that allows the runner, while on a continuous run, to use fast, moderate, or slow periods of running alternated as desired by the runner. This workout is both aerobic and anaerobic.
‘‘Therefore, this kind of session can vary relative to the individuals needs, which are most important. I prefer to do this on grass, and usually work between a 20 and 30 minute period, with two-thirds of the session alternating my running speed.
‘‘Lately, I’ve been doing this on my treadmill in front of the TV, as the time I have to do it is usually late at night or very early in the morning.’’
