The day started with loud music in our room. “I need a hero” from ABBA. It’s the kind of music to put you in a good mood from the very beginning of the day.

At 7:45, we meet on the court. We have referee practice. Which means, warm up, and then some exercises. Mechanics, whistle, counting, moving on the court, showing numbers to the table, everything is drilled. We also ran the bips test. Prerequisite to officiate in certain leagues around the world. When we were done, we went to get breakfast, and get showered.

We had another big music session in the room. This time we listened to Céline Dion, and other gems of French music. We go downstairs to our conference room, and get ready to work.
I am chosen as volunteer for washing the clothes. We have some shirts especially for the camp, and obviously since we do so many different sport sessions.
Presentation from Valentin. He is a Swiss guy, just like me. He talks about goaltending and interference. Especially useful when you officiate the top league players, that can actually jump and do this. Big discussions were sparked when Kuba showed some clips of his, from Euroleague.

It’s time to start day two! Just woke up from our bed, and we realize how our legs are feeling after yesterday’s workout. No worries it’s a good thing and fortunately, it’s time to go for stretching wake up.  As soon as our muscles are ready again, we are going on the court for mechanic drills, it’s time to correct the wrong habits we show during yesterday’s game. After repeating many transition exercises, jump ball, seconds counting, and so on, it’s finally time for breakfast.

Ready to work hard on the theory aspect of our job! First Laimonas presented the backcourt violation rule and then Marc talked about screens, always super interesting to go deep into the rulebook! After a short Break, Marcin takes over Marc for one long lecture about the screen, what to look at, what to expect and why!?  Then Kuba and Marcin analyze the clip we did last night about our games, always a nice discussion with all of us.

Then back to the routine!! Time to REF! After a nice game, still feeling my legs, we have no rest … it’s time to wake up our upper body! And finally, the nest time of the day, officiating the best players of the camp! I really feel, only after two days, that we know each other, and our team spirit is growing!

Let’s keep working!!  
Alexandre Tornay

The first day cannot be called any other way than amazing. The group of people that met here is great and willing to work on themselves. Our first day started with an overall body check up which showed us what we need to work on. After that, we had our first session – besides a routine introduction of everyone present and the attributes of the camp, we had an introductory part on the basics of 3PO and we watched the clips from Session 1 of the camp from last week. Following that, we had a presentation about Referee Recorder – a great tool for video processing of our games that will be useful not only on this camp. After the introductory part, we had lunch and a bit of time to rest. The rest was very appreciated, since then came the most important part of the game – the workout and the games. We started with a warm-up together with the players which was led by professional personal trainers, and we felt the heat from the very beginning. We then divided ourselves into two groups, one went to officiate the games and the other went working out with the trainers. After some time, the groups switched their activities and continued working out/officiating games. We finished the day with a video session with clips from our games.

A big thank you goes not only to Kuba and Marcin, but also to the trainers and the physiotherapist, who look after us and help us to do our best at the camp.

I look forward to keeping working hard and making the most of this camp in the following days!

Bruno

SESSION 1  finished very successfully,
Now time to start SESSION 2.
Players and Instructors are ready!

The last day began with same morning like days before, as we are already have it as habits – early wake up and have practice in the gym.
Today the physician coach could rest, giving us the possibility to make the warming up by ourselves, just taking morning coffee while we are doing his program without himself. Today we were better in specific referees drills, such as jump ball, transition, signals. On the end of morning practice we should undergo Yoyo test, first time for many of us ever, and we did it everybody!

Then we received the confirmation on body check device that we spent this week with measurable profit.
In the lecture room we prepare clips from yesterday games which were in Aquapark gym. And then we discussed them, my friend Vasilii was a photograph, it was great 🙂
After the mini-break we listened presentation by Roman from Czech Republic. He told about travelling and for me it was good thing to remind us about hop-step, pivot foot and spin moves.
The senior campers trusted on our improvement (but i’s not definitely )) and we did the preparation for the games ourselves finally to put the cherry on the cake on the last day games
Quick warming up with Woiciech, and we are ready to hard work again – in the fitness for upper body, and then on the court giving right decisions
Like it was before we split for two groups. When we officiate, we try to do our best, and our instructors has no remarks and questions, our legs after leg day run us forward and help to take correct position. In fitness zone we came to hell, arms day did not pretend like anything difficult, but it was like the circle of hell, but we were prepared and like all days we survived!

After the last shower here, during countdown to say good bye, I felt myself like after the parents day in the children camp, when after the many meetings many communications you stay alone with the memories and expectations to repeat these days of our lives.

With the best regards
ANASTASIIA CHABANNAIA

Another day, another workout 🙂 At the beginning of the day we were happy to welcome next instructor – Marcin Kowalski. Then we started as usual, some warm-up activities, including the exercises with the stretch bands. Some of us felt pain from yesterday hard work, but there was no time to thinking about it. After the warm-up we just repeated the 3PO mechanics on the court and then, we were also practising with the ball. The task was, how can we make a good jump ball? It is easy, let´s practice! After that, we were working on our reporting to the table officials, and just before the breakfast we did our favorite activity – BEEP TEST 🙂

After breakfast we met each other in the conference room, where we went through the presentations. The first one was prepared by “Russian team”, Vasilii and Nastya. Their topic for today was screening. This presentation was followed by another one from Marcin, also about the screens. We saw many interesting clips with legal and illegal screening. Then, small break for some snack and again back to work. Next presentation, this time about the handchecking, which was presented by Semen. I really liked it because we made a great discussion about it.

Before todays games, we had a free time for relax, or other activities. In the afternoon, we were officiating the games. We started in our place, but then we moved to the gym close to the aquapark, which was beautiful. After that we came back for the dinner. We were still missing one fitness lesson, so let´s go for that! Today we had a leg day, but it wasn´t only hard work, but also fun. Semen showed us, how looks animals in Russia, sometimes I felt like we were at ZOO not in the fitness 😀 😀

We finished our day with basketball game 5on5, of course, the Czechoslovak-Belgian team won 🙂

So now, let´s enjoy the last day of the camp !!
 

Kuba from Opava, Czech Republic.