"We can't afford to get tired during games. This is why we work them so hard in practice," Cameron says.
"We are constantly telling our players to 'train ugly,' which is a concept I learned while coaching at Red Deer College with head coach Ken King.
"It basically means to get out of your comfort zone, and to not worry about how you look while you're training or learning, but to just commit to learning, and to be OK with making mistakes during the process.
"Without mistakes, nobody would ever learn. Our players take this concept to heart, and train hard."
On offence, the JV Girls Spartans keep things pretty simple.
"As long as there's continuous ball movement and we aren't stagnant, good things can happen on offence," Cameron says.
"The more we move, the more turned around and spread out the defence gets, opening up the key for our bigs, Ali Mertens and August Bradshaw, to go to work, or allowing strong drives from our guards."
The Spartans usually play a man-to-man defence "because that's worked for us so far this season," Cameron says.
However, on Jan. 8, during a game against Sundre, they played a specific zone defence for the first time, and Cameron says that worked pretty well.
"There are absolutely some details that need tweaking, so we will be running it in practice to get better at it, but we truly do believe that keeping things simple is best," Cameron says.
Cameron would like to see her players move their feet more while on defence.
"We have a couple players who reach on defence, instead of moving their feet to get in front of their opponent," she says.
In that Jan. 8 game at the Ralph Klein Centre, the Spartans beat Sundre 62-27.
Brynlee Rice led the team in scoring.
"Rayna Somerfeld had her best game of the season, pulling down some crucial boards, and playing stellar defence against the Sundre girls," Cameron says.
"The girls play well together, but we are a young team. We have a long ways to go before we will be ready for senior ball, and the players understand this," she adds. "We need to get better at boxing out, and crashing the boards for rebounds."
Cameron and fellow coach Santana Scarff see their role as more than coaches, though.
"Bottom line, is we care about the girls we coach. We want them to do well on the court, but more than that, we want them to be successful off the court as well," Cameron says.
"We push them hard so they can reach the potential that we see in them, and we encourage them to always keep trying.
"The best part about all this, though, is that these girls have a desire to find that potential within themselves as well."
