Disability Sport Wales
Chwaraeon Anabledd Cymru

BLOG 3. Caroline Matthews - The Long Road to Beijing

29/11/07 – Where did November go?

Its been a really tough month – with trips up to Stoke Mandeville in Aylesbury after work on a Monday night leaving me completely knackered by Tuesday morning and with the whole of the rest of the working week to look forward too! Its been really great to have so much time with the other women from the GB team tho…previously the squad has been lucky if we have got together once a month, but a lot of the players are based in the SE of England – so a lot of the GB women have been coming to the Monday night session in Aylesbury and its been good to spend more time with them all.

In addition, for the first time, a GB coach has been travelling to Cardiff once a week to do an individual session with me! This is unheard of!!! The GB women have never had that kind of support and it has been wonderful to be put through my paces with only a 20 minute drive across town instead of the usual 3 hours each way!! Its a much more productive session and the individual attention has done wonders for my skill improvement.

Both the regional sessions in Aylesbury and the individual sessions in Cardiff are very positive signs of the changes that are taking place in the GB womens squad at the moment…we have never had so much support and its nice to feel that our efforts are being recognised and that we are being taken seriously. I hope this is just the start and that things continue to improve. The full squad training weekends are still few and far between – our next squad weekend is over Easter Weekend – and then we will be thrown headlong into the Visa Paralympic World Cup in Manchester from 7 – 10th May 2008….which will be here before we know it! Being in a team sport, the time we get to train together and run the various offensive patterns that we use is vital.

Our GB team manager has just been out to Beijing to inspect the building site…er – i mean preparations! She has come back with some amazing stories and fascinating photos of the venues and accommodation. We were horrified to be told that in the whole of the wheelchair basketball venue there is currently only 1 accessible toilet! I think we made it known that this really needs to be addressed – you try getting 24 players through one toilet in a 10 minute half time….its wouldn’t be very pretty!

The information about the next year and the significant dates for the GB squad members is now starting to trickle through – we’ve been told that the team of 12 who will actually be going to Beijing will be announced shortly after the Visa Paralympic World Cup next year…I hate the selection day – its far more stressful than actually competing at an international level. So much blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice goes into the preparation for each tournament that it would be completely heart-breaking to not get selected. Oh well – fingers crossed…and in the meantime I’ll keep training as hard as I can.

Check out the Cardiff Celts website to find out more about wheelchair basketball and don’t forgot to come back in January for Caroline’s 4th blog.
www.cardiffwheelchairbasketball.co.uk

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Keep updated with Caroline’s progress as she prepares for the Womens Wheelchair Basketball competition at ttthe Beijing Paralympics next year.

If you missed BLOG 1 please click here:
www.disabilitysportwales.org/news/caroline-matthews-the-long-road-to-beijing

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