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Team Canada women's soccer uses Omada to build chemistry
Source: Trinity Western Sports Info
LANGLEY, British Columbia – Having two CIS national championships to his name, with Trinity Western University’s women’s soccer team in 2008 and 2009, Team Canada’s FISU women’s soccer head coach Graham Roxburgh knows a thing or two about developing team chemistry over the course of a season.
But, unlike with the Spartans, when Roxburgh has a few months to bring a team together, with Team Canada, it’s a whole different story. With Team Canada Roxburgh has one week.
So, with 20 of the best university players in the country converging on Trinity Western University this week for a pre-FISU games training camp, Roxburgh turned to the Trinity Western based Omada Teambuilding Saturday afternoon for a few hours on the high and low ropes courses; an event that helped bring the team together and one that will certainly pay dividends in the long run.
Omada Teambuilding is an organization that helps build and develop team unity in a variety of capacities, but for Team Canada it was the TWU campus based ropes courses that had players learning to find a high-wire balance with trust and problem solving as the central focus. The low ropes courses focus more on “game-like tasks that exercise the mind and body” while the high ropes courses involve “two to three people working together…to overcome a problem 30 to 75 feet high, while the rest of the group is responsible for their safety using a rope and harness system.” And in both cases, it was all about believing in your teammates.
“It was an opportunity to break down some of the boundaries and barriers that exist when you form a new team, especially when the team consists of players who have spent most of their careers competing against each other,” said Erin O’Driscoll, Omada program coordinator and lead facilitator, who led the Saturday event. “Our goal with Omada is to help assist the team staff in exploring the dynamics of the players which otherwise may not have been discovered. It provides players an opportunity to experience helping each other in stressful situations and it really accelerates the development of the team.”
The players were forced out of their comfort zones on a number of occasions and forced into, literally, high pressure situations that all in all helped develop both team cohesion and relationships with one another.
“Omada was a fantastic experience that has enabled us as a group to start to work together and become a team in a very short timeframe,” Roxburgh said. “The task of creating a team out of great individual players is very hard and something that we need to focus on a lot, so working with Omada is highly beneficial. The girls loved it as it created an environment for our players to trust and rely on each other and an opportunity for players to express themselves and their personalities.”
After each activity on the ropes courses, the athletes analysed the situations and discussed which strategies worked and which didn’t with the focus on learning how to “depend on each other and communicate with each other.”
“For me the opportunity to learn to trust each other and communicate with each other to overcome some pretty tough challenges will help this team deal with what’s ahead,” Roxburgh said.
Team Canada will practice Thursday and Friday before leaving for Shenzhen, China Saturday as they prepare for the 26th Summer Universiade’s women’s soccer tournament, which will be contested from Aug. 11-21.
Schedule (practices and games at Trinity Western University)
Thursday – 11:15 a.m. (practice) and 3:30 p.m. (practice)
Friday – 9:30 a.m. (practice) and 7:30 p.m. (game vs. Team BC
U16)
Canada is in an opening round pool with China, Great Britain and Taiwan.
Click here to learn more about Omada Teambuilding
About Omada Teambuilding
Omada Teambuilding is part of Trinity Western University, which has
a 40-year legacy of leadership development. Omada specializes in
providing tools to stimulate innovative thinking in the workplace,
thereby catalyzing the potential for continued growth. Their
programs employ a dynamic learning approach based on the principles
of experiential learning. During their programs, the class or
student group will learn through hands-on experience. It is their
goal to help the students identify strengths and weaknesses and
turn them into tools for maximizing potential. Facilitation is the
encouragement of the learning process for the students. Omada has
worked with a variety of students from school districts from around
the Lower Mainland and beyond.
About the Summer Universiade
The Summer Universiade is an international multi-sport
event that takes place every two years and is second only to the
Olympic Games in the number of participating athletes and
countries. The Universiade is open to competitors who are at least
17 and less than 28 years of age as of January 1 in the year of the
Games. Participants must be full-time students at a post-secondary
institution (university, college, CEGEP) or have graduated from a
post-secondary institution in the year preceding the event.
