Thanks Coach! Hollie Grima to Jan Stirling
Issue: Volume 29 Number 3
With a World Basketball Championship gold medal sitting in her trophy case, it’s easy to see why Opals player Hollie Grima describes coach Jan Stirling as ‘the type of coach who can get the best out of you’.
Grima was on the court for the Opals’ historic gold medal winning match with Russia at the 2006 World Championships in Brazil. The 24-year-old says that Stirling gave every player in the 12-woman squad an opportunity for court time during the tournament and credits this with making the squad feel like a ‘real team’ no matter what combination was on court.
This approach, Grima says, is inherently Stirling. ‘Jan’s focus is always on helping everyone achieve their potential and giving you a chance to do it.’
Grima’s first encounter with Stirling was in 2000 when she was invited to her first Opals camp in Adelaide. ‘I was 18 and very scared,’ Grima recalls. ‘I had come across Jan before, of course. She had previously coached Adelaide in the Women’s National League and I had been playing for the AIS [in that competition].’
Grima says she knew Stirling had a reputation as a tough coach. ‘That was in the back of my head and it was all pretty daunting at first, but one of the things about Jan is that while she’s a tough coach, you know what you’re going to get with her.’ Grima describes training sessions where Stirling outlines exactly what the squad will be doing on a white board before hand, breaking down the drills and allocating times. ‘Most of the girls like this because if Jan says a training session is going to go for 90 minutes, it will go for 90 minutes,’ Grima says. ‘She’s not like other coaches who may say “ we’re going to have a 90 minute training session” and it goes for two-and-a-half hours.’
Stirling is unlike any other coach in many ways. She has, herself been an Australian representative player and her appointment to the national coaching job in 2000 marked the first time that a former Australian player, and a woman, had been named as Head Coach.
Since her appointment, Stirling has coached the Opals to a bronze medal at the 2002 World Championships, and to silver at the 2004 Olympics.
The World Championship win in 2006 was the first time that either a men’s or women’s team had won a World Championship title and this was backed up with Commonwealth Games gold in the same year.
In February this year, Stirling was named as Coach of the Year in the Australian Sports Awards.
Having been in the Opals squad for five years now, Grima says she is a lot more comfortable than she was on her first day of working with Stirling, but says she still gets nervous, although it’s more of an excited nervousness.
In 2005 Grima became Basketball Australia’s International Player of the Year. She attributes much of her own success to the way Stirling makes her feel as a player. ‘I know that almost every time I get off the court I come away feeling that I’ve improved. Jan’s focus is on making sure that everyone has the things they need to play the best basketball they can.’
She cites as an example Stirling’s suggestion that Grima seek some help to set some long term goals for the sport. ‘She covered the costs for me to go and do that and it’s been a real help. She’s really a very generous person and likes to make sure everyone is okay.’
However Grima says that Stirling is pretty much all business, keeping her personal life to herself. ‘[On a personal level] I know that when she laughs, it’s loud and you can’t help laughing with her and that she can’t survive without coffee, but that’s about it. I know more about her on the basketball court ... that she is a big believer in core stability and has us put in a lot of efforts to develop those muscles with Swiss ball exercises and that she believes in strength, strength and strength.
‘She says going up against players in other countries and possibly getting hits means we have to focus on our strength and toughness.
‘I also know that she’s always at me about the need for a ‘wide base’. I’m six foot three and she always wants me to get low in my stance and bend my knees, so she’s constantly yelling out “wide base” in training and when I’m on the court. It’s got to the point where I hear that in my head a lot of the time,’ Grima laughs. ‘And she believes in enforcing defense. Her belief is that good defense creates your offense.’
She says that Stirling’s main influence on her has been in her attitude. ‘Jan believes that if you’re going to do something, you give it 100 per cent and that’s I think, what has helped me on the court and off it.’
Grima says she doesn’t think she could ever become a coach herself. ‘I’m a follower, a team player, not a leader’, she says, but admires coaches who get up there and can plan and execute a plan and retain the respect of players ... someone like Jan Stirling.
‘She’s basically a very driven but genuine person. All she wants to see is people succeed and be the best they can be and she goes out of her way to make that happen,’ Grima says. ‘She strives to be the best she can be in her job and I guess with those qualities and that attitude, that’s why we’ve been so successful.’
