Women’s National Age-Group Assessment Camp Invites and Coaches Announced

A national age-group assessment camp will be held at Humber College, North Campus in Toronto, ON from December 16 - 20, 2013 for a group of invited female athletes identified through the national identification process. Thirty-nine young female athletes from across the country have been invited to take part in the camp, which includes on and off-court sessions.

This assessment camp, combined with previous and upcoming identification work, will contribute to the assessment of the overall athlete pool and in determining those athletes to be chosen for each of the U17 and U18 women's summer national team program's tryouts by invitation. Both U17 and U18 national teams will be competing in FIBA sanctioned championship tournaments this coming summer.

The coaches who will provide on-court leadership at the camp will include junior (U18) women's national team head coach Rich Chambers, cadette (U16) women's national team head coach Carly Clarke, cadette women's national team assistant coaches Andre Desjardins and Taffe Charles, and cadette women's national team performance analyst Jodi Gram. Additional women's national team program coaches who will be working with the athletes are Michele Belanger, Agnes Borg, Scott Edwards, Scott Reeves, Dani Sinclair and Jeff Speedy.  Senior women's national team head coach Lisa Thomaidis and development women's national team head coach Fabian McKenzie will also be present at the camp for technical guidance and leadership.  In addition, senior performance analyst Dipesh Mistry and women's national team statistics consultant, Hasan Alanam, will be overseeing the training and professional development of performance analysts Jodi Gram, Michele Hynes and Megan Wiggins.

 "We are excited to hold this camp to provide athletes with exposure to our Canadian Style of Play and give them an opportunity to apply this knowledge towards the goal of becoming a world-class athlete in international basketball," said Denise Dignard, Director of Women's High Performance. "After holding our women's high performance technical summit last week, we are looking forward to having some of our pool of world-class national coaches working with these young athletes to integrate the Canadian Style of Play.  This will help achieve full harmonization for the long-term development of podium athletes for the senior national team program."

Dignard went on to say, "Our performance analysts are a very important addition to our national team staff as they will contribute much more in-depth information to accelerate the learning of our athletes."

The junior (U18) women's national team will compete at the FIBA Americas U18 Championship for Women in Colorado Springs, CO from August 6 – 10, 2014. The tournament features teams representing eight countries from North, South and Central America and the Caribbean, with players born in 1996 or later.

The 2013 cadette women's national team will attend the FIBA U17 World Championships for women, which will be held in Slovakia from June 28 – July 6, 2014. The team qualified after finishing second at the FIBA Americas U16 Championship in Cancun, Mexico this past summer.

WOMEN'S NATIONAL AGE-GROUP CAMP INVITEES