Double camp for +50 Women

The FIMBA GB +50 Women decided to organise 2 training weekends in January to ensure that the new year got off to a flying start.

The first training weekend of 2025 took place in Leicester with the aim of continuing to improve the understanding of the team philosophies and building player/team confidence as we work towards the World Championships this year.

Player focus was excellent as we concentrated early in the sessions on passing, shooting, rebounding and defensive drills. Particularly impressive was the accuracy of the shooting especially during the Sunday session in a cold sports hall. This is a strong indicator that players are using time away from training to work on their games.

Team captain Ruth and player/coach Hazel made valuable contributions in the sessions by bringing in new defensive and passing drills, which players reacted to extremely well and with immediate benefits evident.

Our second January training gave us all the opportunity to see the entire Ticino squad in action for the first time over the weekend, along with other members of our training squad. We focused on improving court awareness in looking for open teammates, making the right pass and improving our fast break and defensive strategies, reaping immediate results across the board.

We continued our work in our “Talls and Smalls” section to increase our threats in the post and identify a number of mid-range options. Various individual set plays were also introduced to the team which I’m sure will come in very hand in key situations.

Meals were arranged by Hazel on the Saturday evenings with team funding ideas tabled during the meal on the first evening. It was great to see that players had actioned the funding plan between the two training weekends with a steady stream of funds already arriving!

It has been a very rewarding month of +50s ball and pleasing to witness how players are gelling, building on court relationships, and demonstrating a sound understanding of the team philosophies in only a few training sessions together. I look forward to working on continuing this improvement over the next few months.

Phil Gander, Head Coach

The +50s have their next training weekend scheduled for February 15th/16th, again at the DMU Leisure Centre in Leicester.