Half an hour before the start of the training, the bus that the players took was still on the way, and Zheng Wei, the head coach of the national women’s basketball, was ready by the court. She wore a ponytail, a sportswear, a red wristband, a whistle around her left wrist, a ball pen in her right hand, and carefully drew tactics on the coaching board.
Different from the previous training with the national team, there were 24 high school players standing opposite Zheng Wei’s guidance. Zheng Wei guided them to develop the most basic training content, from passing and catching the ball, fengshui ball breakthrough, to the penalty basket action, the head coach of the national team has been deducting basic skills and grasping details. After her retirement in 1998, Zheng Wei had been focusing on coaching for 25 years and cultivated several generations of national players. She repeatedly emphasized the importance of basic skills in the interview.
Last summer, Zheng Wei, who had been a teaching assistant of the national team for 12 years, was appointed as the head coach of the national team women’s basketball. Four months later, she led the world’s top teams such as China’s women’s basketball Linke Belgium, France and Australia to win the runner-up of the World Cup. Zheng Wei guided herself to be the best coach of the World Cup. After standing on the stage of the World Cup finals, Zheng Wei’s goal was to make China stand among the world’s top teams for a long time women’s basketball. She needed to explore more young forces.
This is Zheng Wei’s guidance for two consecutive years to come to the Nike All-Star Game. Last year, she took a fancy to a high defender who is more than 1.8 meters tall. The high school player rejected the invitation of the professional club, but Zheng Wei’s guidance is still ready to persuade her at a better time. After the All-Star Game, Zheng Wei’s guidance will present awards to Liu Qi, the MVP player of the winning team, Rizhao No. 1 Middle School, and give her the opportunity of trial training for the national No. 2 team on the spot. Director Zheng regards these teenage children as the future of Chinese basketball. She hopes to find more good seedlings from Nike and become world-class players like Shao Ting and Han Xu.
We interviewed Zheng Wei during the Nike All-Star game. The following is our conversation.
Houchang Village sports team: What are the different feelings of taking high school students to train this time and bringing professional players in peace?
Zheng Wei: taking high school students is a new experience for me. I am looking forward to it I am. After taking the professional team for so many years, my experience is: if their basic skills are relatively solid, when they reach the professional team or even the national team, they still have room to rise. If the Foundation is not fixed, maybe their room for rising is limited. Therefore, whether it is high school players or school coaches, I want them to know the importance of laying the foundation.
Houchang Village sports team: you have more than 20 years of teaching experience. What do you think are the differences between student players and youth training players?
Zheng Wei: First of all, it is their desire to make progress. From yesterday’s training, I can see that they are a little nervous, but I can feel their desire to learn. And in the process of training, I think their children’s understanding should be slightly better than those of the youth team.
Another is concentration. I have a habit. After talking about the key points, I will ask questions. Including the members of the national team now, what they fear most is that I ask questions. The purpose of doing this is to keep them focused at all times and not to do ineffective work. In the training of the national team, the players are very nervous every time and often cannot answer it. But yesterday, when I was asking questions, most of the student players could answer them. I think this is different and I think it is very good.
Houchang Village sports team: in the national team in recent years, Shao Ting, Han Xu, Wu Tongtong and other players are all players who have stepped out of the Nike League. How do you think their success is copied to more students?
Zheng Wei: I think the main difference between youth training players and student players is that one practice takes a long time and one practice takes a shorter time, the existing advantages of student players are understanding and understanding. If they have plans to play a career in the future, I hope they can take more care of training during their school, this will be more helpful for them to enter their careers.
Shao Ting, Han Xu and Tongtong are already world-class players. I also hope that more such seedlings will appear on the stage of endurance.
Houchang Village sports team: you have participated in Nike All-Star activities for two consecutive years. Are there any players that impressed you?
Zheng Wei: Hu Yifan from Shijiazhuang No. 2 Middle School this year and Deng Yuting from Yali Middle School. Hu Yifan’s basic skills should be very good among these players. In addition, she also showed some leadership, take the lead in doing actions from the beginning of warm-up. Deng Yuting’s projection ability is very good, and his height is also good. I think these two players are available in the future.
Last year, there was a classmate Li Jialin in Shenzhen No. 2 experiment. Someone showed me her video collection before the All-Star Game. First of all, I was very interested in her height. This kind of defender is more than 1.8 meters tall, very scarce. The height of the current defender in China women’s basketball is not enough. If you want to be promoted to a world top team, you must have a defender of this height. After watching the game, I also communicated with the club to see if there was any chance to introduce such players. But later I heard that she might still prefer to study and choose to go to college first. I think if I have the chance in the future, I will persuade her again.
Houchang Village sports team: in yesterday’s training, you directly interrupted the training because the players did not shout out the defensive slogan. Why do you attach so much importance to this matter.
Zheng Wei: Basketball is a team project, and it is very necessary to cooperate with each other. These high school players may not know that if everyone echoes well on the court, they can improve the fighting capacity by 30%, so in the training of the national team, Echo is a very important part. The interruption of training is to hope that they will remember this from an early age.
Houchang Village Sports Team: so you usually train in his national team as such a strict coach.
Zheng Wei: that is much more severe than this (laughter) what you may have seen yesterday may be the most gentle side of me. After training yesterday, I sent a circle of friends. My players commented that after seeing Zheng’s meeting with small players, I remembered to give them a meeting. I joked and asked them if they were going to ask questions? They sent a lot of dizzy expressions in the reply area.
Houchang Village Sports Team: Xu Weimin’s guidance once said that the national team especially needs your temperature, the severity of the field and the warmth of the field. How did you do this switching?
Zheng Wei: I think this must be separated. On the court, it is the coach’s duty to be strict and strict, but after the training competition, I think they are all children and need more attention. No matter in life or in thought, they all need to communicate. If I still have a strict face, she will not dare to talk to you, which will not solve the players’ psychological problems, so I think, there is still a big difference between the field and the field.
Houchang Village Sports Team: so women’s basketball has been wandering in the world’s top eight in recent years. After you took office, you led the team to achieve a breakthrough and won the runner-up of the World Cup, which solved all-round problems on and off the court.
Zheng Wei: in fact, it is easy to say and difficult to do. I think I may have been with the team for a long time, have a good understanding of domestic players, and have a good understanding of international development trends, and know where our own problems are.
One more, we have learned many failures in the last cycle. Those things are deeply engraved on the psychology of coaches and team members. We are just the attitude of shame. In this step, be sure to step out. So we do the basic training every day. The arrangement of techniques and tactics may be more targeted, but most importantly, I think it is the determination of the players, we must break through this window paper and enter the world’s top teams.
Houchang Village Sports Team: before training, you gave special snack to those high school coaches. I want to know what kind of experience you have taught them.
Zheng Wei: I have always wanted to find a chance to say this. In the national team for so many years, I have seen many players need to spend a long time practicing basic skills after entering the national team, and some things are hard to improve. For example, shooting, her movements have been shaped, it is very difficult for our coaches to correct the timing again, and the shooting posture is wrong, then how can we improve her hit rate?
Han Xu, her foundation is very good, and her foundation is very solid. Yang Liwei’s basic skills are quite good in the world, so they can go to WNBA, and their rising space is very large. Therefore, I hope that coaches must attach importance to basic skills in basic training. Basic actions play a very important role in the promotion Space and Upper limit of a team member.
Grass-roots coaches must not underestimate their responsibilities and do not feel that their work is insignificant. I want to tell them that in my place, grass-roots coaches and professional coaches are equally important or even more important.
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