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The national team held a training camp this week and invited all the players currently in the NT pool to come out for a series of drills, fitness tests and a mini-tournament. In addition to the old stalwarts and up and comers, the camp also included a large number of long term prospects who were brought in to give them some experience.

The complete list of invitees included:

PGs:
Michel Picard (6675688)
Sylvain Milot (9256242)
Robert Lakie (7971352)
Stephen Pushkin (5660976)
Edward Lowe: (10639045)
Jérome Forest (10638219)

SGs and SG type SFs:
Jabir Issa (7971662)
Ed Matthews (7972131)
Robert Lakie (7971352)
Xavier Arel (7971254)
Chris Thomas (7972018)
Leonard Speakman (10638139)
Edward Lowe: (10639045)
Ettore Mazzocco: (10639411)
Matthew Williams: (10637186)

Forwards:
Téo Saint-Arnaud (6676028)
Paul Wendon (2931215)
Geoff Abbott (4472574)
Essa Abu-Kaleel (7971517)
Momar Maja (9256889)


Big Men:
Scottie Smith (6605609)
Daniel Spencer (7972139)
Alex Hatton (9256416)
Christopher Moran (9976392)
Frank Guest (9256796)
Ginés Beato (10638354)
Lester Griffith: (11816504)
Chris Minnerup: (10637220)

This was the largest camp that Canada has ever run due to the large number of prospects coming out of the U21 program. The last few years have see a huge improvement in the level of young, high potential players getting good training and it should lead to a big pay off down the road.

Highlights include:
- A number of injuries limited the active participation of some veterans including Lakie and Pushkin.
- Christopher Moran came in in surprisingly good shape, however an assistant coach found him eating an entire crate of hagis during a water break and the team has decided to wait a few weeks before determining his role with the squad.
- While many 22 year olds impressed the coaching staff, only one has earned a spot directly onto the NT. Many more are on the cusp of making it.
- The NT coaching staff feel really confident that some of the wholes the team has shown will be filled in the next season or two. We have a few bigs who could become legit NT starters, a ton of high potential guards (some of whom are being trained as PGs even if most look like SGs right now) and two great forward prospects (Maja and Kaleel).


The team will start off with a small roster and add players as injuries and gameshape dictate. The initial lineup will be:
*Picard
*Issa
Mathews
*Abbott
Wendon
*TSA
Smith
*Mahmoud

* Denotes projected starter.

In addition, the team will add another PG to the roster to bring the initial number to 10.

Nice breakdown there. It there should be an exciting time for the NT over the next few seasons. :) There are a lot of high potential players on the scene, and if they continue to be well trained, the talent level of the NT has a chance to start increasing fairly quickly.

Great write up! Thanks for taking the time to do it.

I am glad to see Maja, finally begin breaking into the NT scene. He is likely a season or so away, but is certainly going to try and make a strong push for late this season. Him and Kaleel will be a formitable duo for years to come and are going to create huge match up troubles for the opposition.

Hey Chris, nice job, appreciate the effort to keep us informed about the NT. I have one suggestion though, maybe for these types of lists that the U21/NT managers have put together you could use a google docs spreadsheet. It is easier for you to do, and in my opinion is easier for us to read. You should try it than these lists could be like this https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AoLUWbCjETafdHZxd...

RIP: While I may have failed on a few NT fronts I am proud to report that during my tenure the team has modernized our facilities and we now practice in a state of the art, multi court complex. Long gone are the dark days of your long stint as coach where the team practiced in dingy junior high school gymnasiums.

Donut: I have thought about using google docs to try to managing scouting but haven't had time to figure out an efficient way of doing it. For lists like the one I posted I think this is just as efficient for two reasons:
1) I maintain a spread sheet with complete skill information on all players I am tracking. What I posted as the "camp roster" is about 60% of those players. I simply copy and paste names into my browser to compile lists like this so it's not a lot of work to do.

2) I don't know about Mogul, but I really do this sort of thing as much for my own benefit as I do to entertain/inform the community. It really helps me to sit down and think about where each player fits into the program to do this sort of thing rather than simply updating a list regularly.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Last edited by chris902 at 10/16/2010 11:40:00 PM

Hey Chris, just curious if you are doing a mid season write up about where some of the understudies stand. It is for selfish reasons of course, as I want to see where Maja stands and what I may want to train to get him closer. Also interested in some of the other fringe players as I think the group is pretty solid.

Cheers

The national team staff have announced that they will be using this week's all-star break to conduct mini-camp with the best players in the national team pool who are not currently on the NT roster. The plan is to invite the top six to nine players to join this week's national team practice and participate in some drills and maybe even have an intersquad game with the current national team. The camp will take place this weekend and an announcement on how the participants do will be made shortly after the practice.