Jenaya Wade-Fray and her Great Britain Standard Life Women's teammates depart for Pravets today for a three game test series against Bulgaria.
Following almost three weeks in camp, where GB Standard Life Head Coach Tom Maher has been running the eye over all his new charges, the team heads out to Eastern Europe for their first competitive action of the summer.
Maher will be making his long awaited coaching debut as his team embark on a challenging summer schedule. Maher who guided China to a fourth place finish at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, has also lead Australia to bronze and silver in 1996 and 2000 respectively will be hoping to get off to a winning start.
When asked about the last week of training and what he was hoping to achieve in Bulgaria he responded.
"It went very well (training), so far we have maintained good health and players have kept their enthusiasm. We want to achieve a lot of things in Bulgaria, of course its natural to win, but we also have to give people a chance to play and we have to focus on our long term goal of being competitive in August."
The team will take on Bulgaria three times in as many days, which will no doubt prove useful preparation for the EuroBasket Qualifying campaign as they play six games in 16 days. It will also give the team management an opportunity to blood some of the new players in the squad including Rose Anderson and Azania Stewart.
Maher is in no doubts on the benefit these games and subsequent test games offer ahead of the EuroBasket games in August.
"They are a massive help, we do things together at practice so the next step is to play somebody especially of a good standing and see how much progress we have made. It is a great advantage to have real games on the computer so we can show the team exactly where we are in terms of what we can do and what we can't do."
Following the Bulgaria games, the women's team will continue camp in Surrey before a home test series against Portugal and away series in Belgium, Holland and Israel. Competitive action gets underway at home (NIA, Birmingham) to Slovakia on the 14 August as part of the first ever men's and women's double header.
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