Nice Bristols Blog: Tour

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With just over 60 days left until Worlds, last weekend Nice Bristols travelled to St Albans for the first in the series of three domestic Tournaments which make up this years UK Women’s Tour.

Normally, these dates form the foundation of our competition diary, however this year we plan to use the Women’s Tour as training and practice for our debut appearance at Worlds in August and so are approaching it slightly differently to previous years.

With this in mind, at the weekend we split our Worlds squad into two even teams with each team competing with just 12 players per team. The idea behind this split was to enable us to work on building strong connections and enjoy some highly competitive games throughout the weekend.

It wasn’t all plain sailing though! Having had the opportunity to wear Garmin Vivofits at the mixed tournaments earlier this season, we have discovered that on average, each player covers around 20km each day, that’s 40km over the whole weekend and averages roughly 6.5km per game!

The fitness challenge of playing with fewer players on each team was something that we relished as we put all those hours spent lifting weights and conditioning to the test. The benefits of smaller teams by far outweighed any tired legs on Sunday morning and it’s just another step on our #roadtoworlds.

Tour 1 was the official start to the Nice Bristols season- the first occasion of the domestic season for all of our training and hard work to be put on display for everyone to see. Teams who were expecting to see a high standard from us were not disappointed- we finished the tournament third and fourth out of 24 teams, behind current European Champions Iceni (London) and E6 (Sweden).

Even with strong competition along the way and split teams, we have comprehensively consolidated our top two position in the UK, whilst also completing our aims for the weekend. Mental toughness and communication were both large factors when playing with a reduced squad- we can’t wait to play as a full squad again to be on pitch and hear all our team mates on the sideline cheering for us!

Our next outing, and our first this season competing as a full squad, will be in three weeks time when we travel Stateside to Boston for an Elite women’s tournament. This will be the toughest competition we will face before Worlds and is therefore an excellent warm up tournament!

Having the opportunity to play North American teams will challenge every single player on the team and the weekend promises to be one not to forget.

Nine weeks until Worlds….

Sportsister,
The Women’s Sports Magazine

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