Uriarte impressed with Argentine energy and effort
05/08/2006
Buenos Aires, May 8, 2006 : After a long wait, as he was named head coach at the of end December 2005, finally the first day of training arrived.
On May 2, the first group of summoned players met at Cenard facilities and spent a week of hard, double-shift training which allowed the new coach, Jon Uriarte, to make his first assessment of his players after working in foreign lands - Australia and Brazil - during a five-year period.
The coach expressed his satisfaction with the work done. On the professional side, he pointed out the strong commitment shown by all the players. "From the first day, the group showed they were willing to work hard, with all their strength, paying the best attention to the instructions and understanding what we want to teach them during our daily training sessions," he said.
"Really, it was a very rewarding week," he added. "We worked mostly on the relationship between blocking and defence, developing exercises with that goal. Today, we worked with spiking on positions two and four in which we put emphasis on good ball defence".
With reference to this, Uriarte explained: "We want to encourage the players to develop the different phases. We must prepare ourselves for great blocking, for long and strong spiking, for high balls. Anyhow, it is just the beginning and we know we will see results in a few days' time".
Something that really stood out during the training was the energy that Uriarte put into each drill, prepared to show by himself how to spike or to do a good defence. "It is very emotional to return to my country after five years, to this very special place for the Argentine national team. As I mentioned before, I want to give back some of what I received with the light blue and white jersey. This is a very special moment in my life, a very happy one," admitted the coach, with a big smile on his face, the same that he showed all week long.
The Argentine national men's team will continue to train on double shifts to prepare for their first international engagement, the visit of the Spanish national men's team from May 22-28 in the north part of Argentina. Other friendly tours involving USA, Venezuela and some other national teams will serve to prepare the team for the World League, the South American Championship, the Pan-American Cup and the "strawberry" of this year's international events, the World Championships in Japan in November.
Buenos Aires, May 8, 2006 : After a long wait, as he was named head coach at the of end December 2005, finally the first day of training arrived.