UCPC II - my review

I arrived home last night from Boston after waiting for hours in the airport on a delayed flight. Lesson's learned on a delay:

• Don't lose your laptop power cable.
• Don't buy easy Soduko. It's too easy.
  
• Don't buy Men's health. It's a waste of $5.
  
• Don't buy a newspaper. You can find free papers all through the terminal.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I can say I had a great time at the UCPC. My two presentations went well, and I felt quite good when I was personally thanked for passing on how my topic would help develop new players. I'll pass on my slides to the conference, but I used the presentation more as a guideline as opposed to what I actually talked about and demonstrated, so I'm not sure what value it has on its own.

As for the talks I attended I'll give a quick recap:

• First was Dr. Goldberg's talk. I liked this talk more than last years, because he talked about more topics with less demonstrations (the demonstrations last year were good, but I didn't need them to prove the point). I came out of the talk with a page full of notes on some points I thought that were very valuable. This points were in relation to mental toughness for an athlete, and how coaches can help their players in terms of mental state.
• I attended Tiina Booth's talk on having a good team practice. This was also a good talk in which I learned a few things that I think will help me lead practices in the future. I was in a little disagreement on some of her points on scrimmage structures, where the goal was to randomize teams, but as she said later that's why we have these meetings. Also, my discussions with my roommate Calvin Lin (coach of University of Texas) led me to believe that was a concept to add and not a rule. This talk was filmed, so you'll all be able to catch it on Ultivillage. Sounds like the book by Tiina and Mike will be out soon, and based on the quality of both their talks (at least what I heard about Mike's) it should be a good read.
  
• I attended a talk by the Zeitgeist ladies (June Srisethnil and Jamie Nuwer...I think) on injuries and prevention. This was the place I think I learned the most important facts. I learned the latest knowledge on how to deal with ankle injuries, and was pleased to be introduced to a program that may prevent many ACL injuries in the future. This information will eventually be online, and I highly recommend you look over the material and get their recommended book.
• I only saw a little bit of the UPA conversation as my ride to the hotel wanted to leave. Not much to say here.

In all, the conference was great in reigniting my love of the game. Outside the conference was bad; I think I had some bad karma to pay for.

If you want some other reads on UCPC check out Match's review. I'm sure some more will be out soon.

PJ