COVID-19 presented many obstacles for coaches with a forced shutdown of training that lasted several months.
Gone was the ability of athletes to train in their usual environment, be with teammates and compete in the sport they love.
Mark Smith, the head coach of the Canadian women’s softball team, chose the glass half full approach to help rally his team as they dealt with a worldwide pandemic and the uncertainty of the Tokyo Olympics.
“I spent a lot of time through the first month of COVID, almost on a daily basis, meeting with players,” said Smith. “Making sure they were doing OK, that they had things to keep them occupied and reassuring them we were going to get through this as a team. And that we were going to be better for it.”
Smith said the 20-player group was just starting to ramp up their training for the Tokyo Games. The Canadian women had a successful training camp in Halifax that ended on March 13 and the players had returned to their homes for a 10-day break. Next up was a trip to California to put the final touches on their Olympic campaign.
The California trip didn’t happen.
Smith said the news of the shutdown and the ensuing isolation was a shock to players and the coaching staff gave them a couple of days to digest the news that their hiatus would not be a short one.
“We have a cross-section of ages on the team,” said Smith. “We have a core group of players that are more towards getting on with life, getting settled into other careers outside of softball.”
With the announcement that Tokyo Olympics would be postponed until July 2021, Smith said the players needed the time to discuss their future with family.
“Most of them had put everything on hold (for the Olympics), with the expectation that after this month their life would change, so we wanted to give them opportunity to give some thought to ‘did the want to continue for one more year?’
Smith said the answer was a resounding yes to continuing the training for another year.
How to continue the journey was the next problem to be solved.
“As a staff, we put together what we called a virtual camp because we felt it was too soon to walk away from things,” said the 61-year-old coach. “With with anything like his you are going to go through some ups and downs. The world was in a pretty big mess, but we were concerned about the whole grieving process around dealing with the fact we wouldn’t be participating in the Olympics this year. We felt to keep the group together and to give them a little bit of a different focus for the next six weeks was important.”
Smith said weekly Monday zoom calls were set up for the players and the coaching staff.
He said the players had assignments and would also meet in smaller groups before coming together for a ‘de-brief.’
The players also continued their physical training under the guidance of Scott Wilgress, the strength and conditioning lead at the Canadian Sport Centre Atlantic.
“Scott has done a phenomenal job giving them training programs’” said Smith, whose players live all over North America. “He was able to give each of them a training program specific to the environment they were in.”
Summer vacation
The group concluded their Zoom training on June 29 and players will get their first summer off from competition for many years.
“We decided that July and August would be their free time, family time,” said Smith. “For many of them, it would be the first time in many years they would experience what summer is like for someone who is not a ballplayer.”
This break also applies to Smith, who has spent the majority of his last 45 summers on ball fields around the world.
His hall of fame career where he was considered one of the top softball pitchers in the world spanned over two decades. He also spent many years coaching in Nova Scotia and has held several heading coaching positions for Softball Canada.
But this summer, his field of dreams will be in Falmouth with wife Ann, who represented Canada in kayaking at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.
Smith said the COVID-19 shutdown gave him a chance to re-evaluate the priorities in his life.
“I think what COVID did was really force you to take a hard look at just how busy we allow our lives to become and how sometimes we are just hamsters on a treadmill," said Smith. " We just go and go and don’t always recognize why we are doing it. I think it gave me a chance to slow things down a little bit and sort of reset my goals and priorities.”
He’s retiring from coaching after next year’s Olympics and the forced break helped assure him that he would be just fine away from the ball field.
“When the last 45 years of your life has been filled with summers on the ball field and travelling around the world, you wonder what would you do to fill the time. It was a concern for me given how much I like to be busy, but what it has done for me is to confirm, I’m going to be just fine.”
Chance for a fresh approach
Smith wears many hats and one of them is director of sport for Sport Nova Scotia. He says it’s important to adjust on the fly to the new COVID protocols as his staff has done with the Canadian women’s team.
Finding different ways to coach without competition is a challenge, but not impossible, he said.
“Patience is important. We all live in a 24-7 world where everybody wants immediate gratification. I look at provincial sport organizations right now and community sport organizations who are struggling with knowing how to transition from games to training opportunities to keep the kids engaged.
“I think we can still make the sport experience for young people every bit as rewarding without games. It means we have to think differently. We have to work harder and adjust a little bit. But this notion that we can’t play softball or we can’t play baseball in traditional games, I just don’t buy it. Our job as coaches is to constantly find ways to challenge, push to make athletes better, but it starts with us.”
See you in September
The women’s team will return to formal training on Sept. 1 with a camp for Canadian players beginning Sept. 12. Bringing the entire team together will have to wait with nine of the athletes living in the United States. Smith is hoping by October or November he can train with the players living in the U.S.
And the players can’t wait to get reacquainted.
“One of the nice things I heard from the players since we shut things down, was how much they all enjoyed one another’s company and missed being around each other. For a few of them who were planning to retire at the conclusion of the Olympics, they commented on the fact they are still going to have another year to be with the same group and train. That means a lot to them.”
Smith said the isolation may have provided them all with a new life-long outlook.
“If anything, we all know that when something is taken from you, you gain an appreciation for how important it is. There is no question they are champing on the bit to get back on the field.
"I think we will appreciate a whole lot of things in life a little bit more once we get to the other side of this thing.”
