The Cook Islands South Pacific Games (SPG) training squad gets the opportunity to learn more about basketball from the ZDO Eddie Calic.  The sessions covered a variety of things from ball drills to self discipline and encouragements.  The highlights from these sessions would be the new drills learned by the team on both offence play and defence play, not to mention the suicide and pushups each member or the whole team had to do when they miss a layup shots or just for not listening to instructions.  The sessions were done the "Eddie way".  No time for smiles, walking, missing baskets and doing the "tamure and rima ki te ope" post (hands on the hips).  At the end of these sessions, no one walks away with a dry singlet or tshirt, they are all wet of sweats...tears maybe!!! the boys also walk away with aching bodies and a sense of satisfaction that they kept with it till the end. 

The National Basketball coach Nga Puna, also learnt a lot from Eddie, there is a saying "you can never be overloaded with knowlegde", hence, the reason Nga Puna puts his hands up for a session with Eddie, not only to give the boys a good training run, but to also take notes during the sessions and ask Eddie a lot of questions to acquire more knowledge and skills about coaching.  At the end of the three sessions with Eddie, Puna walks away with a note book full of scribbles and notes.  Puna will definately utilise the new drills from Eddie in his quest to gear up the team for SPG.  One thing he learnt is to practice, practice, practice to get the boys into the habit of being low in a game.  Nose to chest at all times when on defence and many more.

From the team, thank you Eddie for all the shouting, pushups, suicides, name calling, sharing of experiences and drills.  You have given us so much in so little time we had with you.  Its up to us to put it into action and take it to SPG.  Looking forward to seeing you there.