I has been a time since Moravian-Silesian trainers decided to prepare a week of castings training for talented children. It has been a time since the analyzed first camps and decided that it is not such easy to get casters from Bohemian part of republic to camp located in Moravian-Silesian part. It has been a time since they tried to make the camp located close to Jihlava city. Just the location almost in the middle or republic and with two soccer fields and accommodation 10 steps from the fields is perfect for such events. And so training camp for talented young casters started in Štoky for four time.
It is incredible what junior national team management is able to prepare for children and how much time it can invest into it.
National youth trainer Karel and his assistants Jura and Honza does not almost have a break during work with children of Moravian-Silesian district. Ten weekends for competitions, some of them starting on Friday morning (travel to the place) and ending when coming home on Sunday 02:00, plus special training camp for district team. And then some training camp for national junior team before world championship and then participating the world championship... Enough? No way, after Sunday arrival home from Hungarian Budapest change the dirty clothes for clean ones and on Monday morning travel to camp in Štoky.
And some of trainers will participate another two camps during August, each for a week too.
Any girl or a boy of whole republic could register to the camp. There was only a limit of attendees so only 20 children was selected. Age limit up to 17 years go give the children a change to show the learned technique during at least the last time in junior category a year later.
But that time it was not prepared only for juniors. Czech casting has a cadet category for second year and so a decision was made to split the training time between juniors and cadets. Some casters left the camp on Thursday and were replaced by older casters. Only those juniors already trying to cast double-handed events stayed too.
For selected people the action was paid. But the interest of the camp was so huge that some casters wanted to participate even on their own costs. So original plan 20 and 20 attendees enlarged to 24 and 21. And some casters were travelling from home without accommodation. Yes, the interest was big. It was amazing. And obligated...
Whole action was managed by Jiří Plachý that was managing trainers, accommodation, food and court and so on. Targets and training stuff borrowed from Moravian Angling Union, Jihlava team part.
It is true that most casters was from Moravian part of republic. We can see that for some years already most casters live there. But some casters from Bohemian part came too. And so casters from South Bohemia, West Bohemia, North Bohemia, even from East Bohemia and Prague part came to Štoky.
A group was divided into two groups. Each group used one field and then the fields were switched. All for ensure all events of pentathlon will be casted twice a day. Each divided group was split to two subgroup. Each subgroup had its own trainer. Best casters were with national trainer Karel and Bomik. The relatively worse casters were with Jiří and second Karel.
But other casters tried to help and so Jeňas, Lucie or Zuzana were helping with training too.
Targets were prepared each day in another direction. It was important for casters to feel the wind and deal with any way the wind did blow. Each target event prepared twice, each in different direction. Distance events on second field almost in backwind direction. Three starts for fly distance and two starts for spinning distance.
Training was two-phased officially and 3 hours per phase. But the heat that came do Highlands changed the plans. Phases were shortened and short breaks for refreshing the bodies in swimming pool were managed. After dinners no official training was announced but targets were still on field and several casters used them and trained more. Sometimes they stopped training at moment no targets could be seen in the dark. Or because lot of mosquito around.
Aside the training and improving the casting technique we were able to see one of the important thing for casting - children from various parts of republic got the chance to speak with other groups. During the days the all started to speak with others. At beginning of the year most time all casters were separated and talked or were lead to speak only to other from their own district. At the end of Štoky time each talked to other, no matter which district they are from. Mission erledigt.
The only problem we still could not solve was taking care of casting equipment. Many casters were forgetting their rod out required space and so many casters were working hard on their bodies during physical trainings as their punishments. But it was not only about physical exercises. As "punishment" some of attendees had to recite poems like Ostrava of Petr Bezruč.
Also this year visitors came to see the group.
Just second day we met well known world champion Ivan Zelenka. Amazing guy being national team between 1981 and 1990 that never missed final round of fly skish during that time and as one of very few casters he can say that he is world and European champion in pentathlon. But he could not stay with us for a long. Just to have a short talk with his almost-brother Karel Světelský and had to move again.
Chief of Czech casting came too. With deputy of youth and sport department of Czech Angling Union. Stayed there for a longer while. Checked training, discussed various casting stuff and so on.
And also casting trainers from nearly located Pelhřimov came to have a watch.
We were thinking about preparing check competition in pentathlon but most trainer decided that there is really a little time for training and it is better to spend it by training than by competition. So the first group was only training and then left Štoky on Thursday morning. In the afternoon second group arrived.
Second group was split in different way. All casters experienced with double-handed event were under trainer Karel and Bombik control. Second Karel took beginners and Jiří took care of all ladies. And going on with hard training. Heat, heat, little rain once, heat heat...
Last day the second Karel just wanted to make a pentathlon for the beginners and girls. Anyway, almost all of them were training for whole week so why not :) And to whole group of second Karel and Jiří did target triathlon. Then just training of distances. After lunch some complained about the weather that changed and results should be better in the afternoon. And so they got second chance. But it helped probably one or two casters. The wind changed quickly and most of children had worse result. So we kept the best result of both rounds.
Then only distances. Very strong back wind could support casters but not everyone was able to use the wind. Many forgot the technique and simply wanted to cast as far as possible with pure power. And it did not help them. Best surprise was Vojta from Jihlava that was able to cast beyond 50 meters border and got around 57 meters for best cast. Incredible.
Not everyone was able to cast fly distance on first field so others did it on the second field after switching groups. There also spinning distance was casted. Zuzana had the longest cast. Nobody had more but Lucie, Martina and Jihlava's Adam got very close.
In four cases we can say the target results of second round were better for pentathlon. The rest used results from first round. More than a half of casters had for more than 20 points better pentathlon than the best pentathlon of whole spring season.
Best improvement was shown by Nikola, Natalie and Marketa, all improved by more than 30 points.
Boys of Jihlava, Honza and Petr, was in Štoky just in the first group and left place on Thursday so we do not know if there is any improvement. We think Petr improvement fly distance a lot, almost casting around 45 meters, so we are thinking about giving him the same rod used by Vojta. Honza is improving spinning distance. Both should participated another training so we were preparing the technique just for further development.
Adam showed us great result at fly events. Unfortunately technique failed during control competition. Target loss 38 looks great and we think fall season should be great. Third best spinning distance seems to be on high level, just waiting for Adam's growing up a little. But anyway Adam improved his pentathlon by another 13 points and for first time he got over 440 points.
Vojta got only 31 points of target loss. That was what we wanted to see and we got it. Perfect. During fly distance we saw boy rod is not enough for him and we gave him harder one. The result was casting beyond 50 meters with 57 meters cast as his best. Unglaublich. Whole pentathlon was more than 470 points. Personal record improved by 28 points.
And time was up. Training camp was ended by our most popular fried cheese and chips. Then all casters moved home. Trainers get a chance for resting a while. Other training camps await next month.
So, hopefully next year in Štoky again.
