Following the Olympic Basketball Dream

[H1]

BASKETBALL – BRENDAN JOYCE, Head Coach, Australian Women’s Basketball Team (Opals), Basketball Australia

I started off playing AFL early on and then picked up basketball in school. I ended up with the choice of going down to North Melbourne to play AFL, or continuing with basketball. When I chose basketball, my dad didn't talk to me for 3 months! Two of my best friends went on to become superstars in the game: Tony Shaw for Collingwood and Terry Wallace for Hawthorn, both Norm Smith medallists. Instead, I ended up playing in the NBL for 13 years for both the Nunawading Spectres and Westside Saints, and made 7 NBL finals.

I made it to the Australian squad but always just missed out on making the team for a World Championships or Olympics. In that time, I was captain of the U20 Australian team and then captain of the U23 team. As a point guard, you are usually an extension of the coach on the floor. However, at the time, I was a fairly intense player and just didn’t see myself as a coach. Despite that, I used to love coaching kids and juniors, even while playing at senior level. Funnily, I actually coached Andrej Lemanis [now Head coach of the Australian Men’s National Team, the Boomers] in the U20s squad. When I finished my NBL career, I decided to go on with coaching as a I still had a passion for the game. I took on a coaching role with the Ballarat Miners in the CBA (now SEABL) league for 3 years, leading them to back to back Championships. Afterwards I coached Wollongong/Illawara Hawks for 11.5 years, then the Gold Coast Blaze for another 2.

While at the Hawks, in 2001, I also became Assistant Coach to Brian Goorjian for the Boomers. With the men’s team, I went to both 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the World Championships in Japan. In 2013, I accepted the full-time Head Coach role with the Opals after doing a lot of work on player and coach development away from the NBL.

[H2]3 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MEDALS IN 3 YEARS

I’m pretty happy with the last 3 years in the job, as it’s the first Olympic cycle where every team has won a World Championships medal – U17s gold 2016, U19s bronze 2015, and the Opals bronze 2014 – which has never been done before. In the U17 World Championships, Australia had never finished higher than 5th, and the USA had never been beaten in either men’s or women’s tournaments. Our team beat the USA in the semi-finals and went on to win the gold medal.

We transferred the Opals style of play to the U19s and U17s via the Centre of Excellence, where I lead the technical coaching and oversee the development program. We’ve now got the chance to put the icing on the cake at the Olympics by winning a medal.

To achieve this, you’ve got to have a vision and a plan. When I looked at the Opals 2012 London Olympic team, I realised that 10 of those girls would be 30-plus by the time we got to Rio. Immediately, Kristi Harrower announced her retirement after holding down the point guard position for 16 years, which was a huge loss for the team. Lauren Jackson and Liz Cambage were also injured and not available for the 2014 World Championships in Turkey. Missing those key names, and with only 3 players from the London team playing, winning the bronze medal felt like gold because it was so unexpected.

From 2013-2014, I built the pyramid of depth – a huge development program to give everybody an opportunity to play. We took the players we picked out through this program on tours to Europe and Asia to really expedite their development and expose them to the best players in the world. The two national coaches we appointed – Paul Goriss for the U19s, and Shannon Seebohm for the U17s – really contributed to our success at the World Championships.

[H2]‘MATURE AGE ROOKIES’ – A LEAF OUT OF THE AFL PLAYBOOK

As part of the development program, I decided to bring in six players aged 19-26 as ‘mature age rookies’, as the AFL do. I thought these rookies had a chance to make the 2014 World Championship team. Through the Centre of Excellence, we controlled their daily training environment, gave them a strength and conditioning program, a skills development program, psychology and nutrition, and taught them how to be professionals. 3 of those kids ended up making the World Championship team because of the unavailable and retired players and made a very important contribution to our success.

The following year we took another 12 mature age athletes into the program, of which 8 went into the U19 group leading up to their 2015 World Championships. The U19 team won bronze and comprised of 11 players who had come through the Centre of Excellence ‘Harvard model’ program. This year we took 12 of the best kids from the U17 program and 9 of those played in their gold medal World Champs win this year.

Similar to AFL, when you draft kids at 17 or 18, they may not be ready physically or mentally. With only 8 teams in the WNBL, there are a lot of really good players who are forgotten about. They’re hardened, physically and mentally mature, and ready. This is why the AFL teams now look at the second tier leagues – VFL, WAFL, the South Australian league.

[H2]CROSS-CODE COACHING

We now share information with coaches in other Olympic sports, such as Greg McFadden with the Women’s Water Polo Team. I also get quite a few calls from AFL teams because AFL is getting a lot like basketball strategically. I’ve spent a day at the Sydney Swans in 2012, been at Collingwood, and Essendon. Kevin Sheedy got me down back when I was coaching the Wollongong Hawks in 2001, asking about ‘flooding’, which we call defensive transition.

Time spent with the AFL coaches is really beneficial; while you're sharing information, you're also getting ideas. It's not just about strategy, it's about people management as well. We all have the same problems. It's not just about basketball. Our athletes are similar too, with more skill, jumping, running, agility and similar body types. Now that the Women’s AFL League has been announced, it’s a good thing we won all these medals so they don’t pinch our girls as well!

[H2]DEVELOPING THE STYLE OF PLAY

As a player, I was brought up on some very systematic basketball and some of those old style structures are still around. However, I wanted to develop a style that was very aggressive defensively but also with a very attacking style offensively. Strategically, we’re doing some things with the Opals that a lot of people said I wouldn’t be able to do. I look at the girls as elite athletes. Just because they’re women, doesn’t mean they can’t do the same things as men, and that’s how I’ve approached it.

If you develop your style of play, it requires players to have a really good skill package and intellect in how to play. Sometimes I think it scares coaches because we actually allow a lot of players to make more decisions than what they would under systematic play, but this allows more freedom to play to strengths.

[H2]SELECTION: THE WORST PART OF MY JOB

We’re just about to select the team, but I know from my Olympic experiences that there’s many distractions at the Olympic Games, so I’ve brought in a sports psychologist to talk to the team about developing resilience. We even discuss topics such as how to deal with negative social media. We’re all doing things behind the scenes to develop our leadership, and learning how to deal with failure and success.

When we brought up resilience, the girls wanted to talk about selection and the pressure and stress of it. You can never prepare for being told that you haven’t made the team. While it’s always disappointing, the team respect and appreciate the one-on-one conversations I have with them. I think it’s highly respectful to talk to each player individually, then if they’ve got questions, they can ask them. As a player who also got cut, I understand the emotions they’re going to go through, but it’s still the worst part of my job. In the end, you’re trying to put the best team together with the right personalities and team spirit. It’s not all about our Excel sheets and measurements. There’s a lot of intangibles that come into play.

[H2]OUR OLYMPIC DRAW

There’s going to be quite a few players at their first Olympics, but they’ve had a lot of international experience leading up to this. While I think a medal would be the icing on the cake, I’ve been coaching a long time and really it’s all about the development and process, which gives us every chance of being successful.

There are over 300 countries who play basketball. In Europe, it’s the No.1 sport for some countries, so the competition is unbelievable. The USA is one of the tough teams, no doubt, and France is also very good. Serbia is No.1 in Europe, and Japan are coming on, as well as Spain, Canada and China. At Rio, we will play Brazil first up, and then Turkey. After that will be France, Japan and Belarus. We’ll then cross over and play either Serbia, Canada or Spain.

Turkey supports women’s sport incredibly, as does France. We don’t have the financial support here, but the commitment from the girls and our development programs are right up there with the rest of the world. Our media coverage must get behind our women’s sport – we’re one of the best in the world.

[H2]TOP TIPS

1. Have an open mind. If you're willing to listen and learn, you can always get better no matter your age.
2. Be resilient, because once you step into the coaching world, criticism of you is incredible.
3. Stay focused on the process of what you believe in, and have the courage of your convictions because it’s very hard. There’s always some sort of politics, and you have to try to convince people to stay with the plan.
4. When success comes, enjoy the moment, because your new challenge begins the next day.