Time snuck up on me. I had been working on various projects and all of a sudden it was 5:35. Egad! I hurriedly put together some doggie bag cards, printed them out, threw my shoes on and ran out the door. Then to compound the problem I went to the wrong gym, so instead of arriving at practice 8 minutes early (still not the 10 I want) I got there 4 minutes early. And what do I find? I find we’re locked out completely with no one in sight.
I go on a search of the building perimeter for a janitor. I come up empty. I head back to the front of the school to see if we have any progress there. The answer is not really. SO I go in search again. Meantime, the PD guy who had showed up last Friday and got the gym situation straightened out is there and he’s trying to call inside. I go in search again and spot a Janitor however he is too far away to hear my banging and I don’t think he sees me.
I go back to the front and basically am about ready to send people home when the janitor moves close to the part of the building we’re in. Finally, after a couple of minutes of banging, we get inside.
It is now 6:20 and we’re just getting into the school. A couple of minutes later and the gym lights are turned on. So it’s not until close to 6:30 that we’re getting underway. How frustrating. I mentally lop large chunks of our practice out of existence. We start with talking about crossovers. I use Jack P, as part of my giving him positives campaign, to demonstrate. We all practice for a minute. Then we go into our continuous motion drill.
I start them off with dribbling and when they reach a corner of the gym they do a crossover before continuing. We practice this with both hands. Most of them are pretty good at the crossovers with their dominant hand, but struggle quite a bit more when forced to do it with their off hand. Already I am seeing a lot more dribbling with heads up than I had before. It has also become apparent who is in shape and who is not. In the not category we have Lucas, who struggles through it, Jack M, who has the lowest endurance of any of our players, and Noah, who basically wimped out by needing to “tie his shoe” not once but twice.
On the other end of the spectrum, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I think Dante could run all day long, though he is S L O W. Tom knows how to pace himself well so he rarely runs out of energy. Jack P is able to maintain a high level of performance as well. For the partner parts of this drill I put the H’s together and Scott clearly had trouble keeping up with David’s pace, which was not surprising. Gordie is somewhere between our top group and our lower group though he’d be on the lower group side if forced to put in a place.
Following our water break, we came back and worked on bounce passes as it was a nice standing drill. Simultaneous to introducing bounce passes, I also introduced the idea of the “taxi cab” wave to signal that a player was ready to catch a pass. As we will be running a motion offense, and players will (get a load of this) be in motion I want to have as few passes go to players who aren’t expecting one as possible.
We did some bounce pass work, which was a little sloppier than I’d have liked. Several of the players also have the tendency to pass from their shoulder rather than the chest. While I don’t mind, at this age, if they’re shooting from their shoulder rather than chest (assuming they’re doing the other things correctly) there’s no reason, on a bounce pass, they can’t do it correctly. We are going to be spending a fair amount of time on the overhead pass because that will be one that gives them a lot of power, something they might not be able to get as much from a traditional pass.
Following our dribbling practice we worked on doing cuts. The focus here wasn’t so great. And unlike on Monday’s practice I was all over the coaching on this one. I was particularly proud of the coaching I did, but the focus was not what I wanted it to be.
And things only got worse when we went into shooting form. I divided them up into two groups and saw all sorts of things I would not liked to have seen. Things like Jack P knocking the ball out of people’s hands. Things like Jack M shooting when it wasn’t his turn. So here I didn’t reassert control like I should have. They’re starting to get sloppy. I want them to have a good time, don’t get me wrong, but the sort of things that were going on were just not acceptable.
So on Monday (being tomorrow) I hope to reassert control. We’re going to shift suicides/permissions to purely effort and find other things to do for the not paying attention bit. David, for instance, has been getting by way more than he should in not paying attention.
Sure he was one of the 5 people who ran two suicides (in fairness Noah only had to run one but he didn’t make the time cutoff) but that isn’t reflective of how many times he was shooting the ball in the air when I was talking or doing other things along those lines. So there was definitely running (of note: Tom got his first forced suicide as he ended with 2 permissions and 2 suicides, one of which was earned by virtue of his forgetting to bring his doggie bag) at the end there.
Even as I gathered us around at the end of practice there was a lot of silliness. I wish I could attribute that to the poor start we had, as that definitely had an impact, but I like to nip things in the bud and I think now is the nipping time. Part of the problem is that we haven’t had a game yet. I wish I could have had some sort of game, a scrimmage if you will, against another team. It would provide some focus. I am generally opposed to scrimmaging, but think I might use it as a motivation stating that if we practice well we can scrimmage at the end of practice on Friday. The old carrot and stick approach.
Time is our enemy at this point, as I need to, at minimum, introduce press break. And considering we haven’t introduced an offense introducing a press break before our first game is going to be interesting.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Saturday, October 28, 2006
10-23 Practice Report
Well after two days of practices that I felt good about, Monday’s practice was not nearly of the same level of achievement. The truth of the matter was, that I felt how "Monday" it was. My teaching during the day wasn’t quite so hot. So it was likely I was not coming into practice at my best. However, I’m not quite ready to take full responsibility for my disappointment.
Anyhow, came into the building and found that only half the gym was opened. So rather than having a whole gym we had a huge dividing wall down the center. Eventually this wall is taken down, though only a minute before practice was schedule to begin so it was a close call. So, just for the record, this would be our third practice and our third time having some sort of facility issue. All of which have been resolved, and really it isn’t something that bothers me too much, since they have been resolved, but I still take note.
Practice starts and all are there except Dante. We do some of the basic warm up drills, including wrist flexes, various jumps, etc. Dante shows up about 3 minutes late.
It is now Saturday morning as I type this and my recollection of the practice has faded somewhat. So in the interest of time I am going to give a shorter summary of what I do recollect as opposed to a detailed description of everything we did.
The main thing we focused on was defensive skills. We did this in a variety of ways. We practiced one on one defense, and protective ball handling, with a drill that required a dribbler to remain in place (though he could turn in circles) while fending off an aggressive defender trying to knock the ball away. We worked on how to guard a man around the perimeter who is one, two, and three passes away. We also did a couple of rebounding drills.
Overall, as I mentioned, the practice didn’t go so well. In the end I think most of the blame lies with me. I simply wasn’t on top of my game in terms of explaining concepts and ideas. The new drills that I introduced were fine drills, if we had done them correctly, but we didn’t do them correctly and so they didn’t really do what they were supposed to do. I also was not on top of my game in explaining how to rotate coverage. At the same time, I was disappointed in the way the players hustled, or didn’t, during this practice. Emphasizing 100% hustle on defense is going to be something I am going to have to do time and time again it is clear as when players were more than 1 pass away on our rotation drill, they were often sloughing off.
On the individual player front, I realized that I had not been doing a particularly good job of connecting with Jack M. Jack M isn’t a particularly likable kid, in that he’s a bit immature and doesn’t have any endearing personality traits, which doesn’t excuse the fact that I hadn’t been doing a good job of connecting. He had been hearing far more negatives than positives from me, and I resolved to do better going forward with him.
On the opposite front, Tom has turned into that kid who does exactly what the coach wants, but in a way that is endearing to both me, as coach, and to his teammates. Having a kid like him, who is always going to give you 100% and be an example, whether conscious or not, to his teammates, is great.
Friday’s practice was both better and worse, but I will leave that for my next writeup which I am hoping to finish tomorrow.
Anyhow, came into the building and found that only half the gym was opened. So rather than having a whole gym we had a huge dividing wall down the center. Eventually this wall is taken down, though only a minute before practice was schedule to begin so it was a close call. So, just for the record, this would be our third practice and our third time having some sort of facility issue. All of which have been resolved, and really it isn’t something that bothers me too much, since they have been resolved, but I still take note.
Practice starts and all are there except Dante. We do some of the basic warm up drills, including wrist flexes, various jumps, etc. Dante shows up about 3 minutes late.
It is now Saturday morning as I type this and my recollection of the practice has faded somewhat. So in the interest of time I am going to give a shorter summary of what I do recollect as opposed to a detailed description of everything we did.
The main thing we focused on was defensive skills. We did this in a variety of ways. We practiced one on one defense, and protective ball handling, with a drill that required a dribbler to remain in place (though he could turn in circles) while fending off an aggressive defender trying to knock the ball away. We worked on how to guard a man around the perimeter who is one, two, and three passes away. We also did a couple of rebounding drills.
Overall, as I mentioned, the practice didn’t go so well. In the end I think most of the blame lies with me. I simply wasn’t on top of my game in terms of explaining concepts and ideas. The new drills that I introduced were fine drills, if we had done them correctly, but we didn’t do them correctly and so they didn’t really do what they were supposed to do. I also was not on top of my game in explaining how to rotate coverage. At the same time, I was disappointed in the way the players hustled, or didn’t, during this practice. Emphasizing 100% hustle on defense is going to be something I am going to have to do time and time again it is clear as when players were more than 1 pass away on our rotation drill, they were often sloughing off.
On the individual player front, I realized that I had not been doing a particularly good job of connecting with Jack M. Jack M isn’t a particularly likable kid, in that he’s a bit immature and doesn’t have any endearing personality traits, which doesn’t excuse the fact that I hadn’t been doing a good job of connecting. He had been hearing far more negatives than positives from me, and I resolved to do better going forward with him.
On the opposite front, Tom has turned into that kid who does exactly what the coach wants, but in a way that is endearing to both me, as coach, and to his teammates. Having a kid like him, who is always going to give you 100% and be an example, whether conscious or not, to his teammates, is great.
Friday’s practice was both better and worse, but I will leave that for my next writeup which I am hoping to finish tomorrow.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
10-20 Practice Report
On Wednesday I received an email from the H’s nanny (interesting tangent: on my e-mail list the H’s have five people on the list: father, step-mother, mother, and two nannies, who are sisters). Anyhow, I get an email from the H’s nanny telling me that Brian is going to be out with a broken ankle. That was clearly not the news I wanted to hear. I send a response asking for how long he is going to be out. If you recall, Brian had broken his ankle before and step mom was concerned about him not being at full speed at tryouts. I originally had guessed that he had re-broken the ankle. Turns out, it was the other ankle in a soccer accident. So this puts us down to 9 players. I also learn in the same email that they will be a little late coming to practice because of a birthday party.
So I arrive at the school, which is a different one than we practiced at on Monday, and I find the door locked. After being told on Monday that I was unexpected at the school, I had sent Emily an email. She assured me that all was taken care of and this was a mistake on their part. Anyhow, I finally get the attention of the janitor. I explain who we are. He starts telling me that he is the only there, we weren’t expected, and he is leaving at 7 (our practice was from 6-7:30). I walk with him to the school reservation schedule and not only does the Park District have the gym from 6-7:30 it has it until 9 o’clock. Janitor is still saying how he can’t stay. I thank him for letting us in and ask him to call somebody to see what can be done. He mutters and demurs, and I say there must be somebody he can call and thank him for his help, while expressing understanding how he doesn’t want to stay late. We part ways without formal resolution.
I get my first look at our Friday gym. Where as we practice at a middle school on Mondays, and so we have a gym that is plenty large, we practice at a 3rd and 4th grade school on Friday. This means that the court is perhaps ¾ of a high school size. It’s not ideal and so it means that drills and concepts that require a full length court will have to be run on Monday, while Fridays will likely be activities that only require a half court, at most.
When 6 rolls around we have the expected seven players. Dante, Jack P, and Lucas brought back their “doggie bag” while Tom wrote it out on a separate piece of paper saying he had done it. Each of them earned a permission (Jack M’s mom brought it when she picked him up). I reminded the rest of the team, when the H’s arrived, that they must bring the card. Failure, in the future, to do so would mean a suicide.
I get ready to start practice and I discover that I have left my practice plan in the car. Whoops. I actually had enough time I could have gone out to my car to get it, but decide that I know what I wanted to do well enough to go without the written form. We start off reviewing pivoting and do the ball holding drill. Something I noticed during the ball holding drill is that my ability to notice quickly what they were doing right and wrong had definitely picked up since Monday. Good to know practice is making me a better coach as well (as when I had run practice with my semi-competitive high school team we simply didn’t have enough practices to worry about much more than doing some basic team drills). The H’s arrived at 6:10 rather than 6:15 so that was good. The H’s arrived at 6:10 rather than 6:15 so that was good. After the H’s joined us we went into our continuous motion drill. As we have 9 players it meant that I got to run the drill with somebody. Obviously this makes it harder to simultaneously coach. I am thinking of doing a non-partner continuous motion drill tomorrow, but these kind of drills tend to be more complex and I worry that they’re not ready for such drills, so I think it’s likely that for the time being I will be getting some extra exercise. During the drill it was clear that Jack M was struggling. Dante and David continued at a fast steady pace the entire time. The stars, however, were Gordie and Tom who did the best job of doing no look passes. That is one of the major goals of what I have been trying to do, besides conditioning, with the continuous motion drills.
After a water break we had further practice with looking up when moving. Actually, first we did dribbling in place. Worked hard on the correct dribbling position with both hands. David and Jack P did the best job. Jack M and Dante struggled more, with Noah not far behind. Let me say at this point that I was wrong about Noah. Like completely wrong. I had a real hard time at the first practice with telling apart Jack and Noah and so it’s entirely possible that I had imputed on Noah problems that were not really his alone, but instead an amalgamation.
After practicing dribbling in place, something I did as a low activity cool down after the continuous motion as well, we went into half court diagonals. I would stand at the opposite side free throw line and they were expected to shout out how many fingers I was holding up. Tom and the Jacks had the hardest time remembering to keep their heads up.
After doing this several times we played a game of “Dribble Knock away”. Basically, while dribbling they had to try and knock away the balls of fellow players. If a player lost control of his ball then he was out. The court got increasingly smaller as more players were out. Obviously the idea was to promote dribbling with your head up since you had to be aware of your surrounding. At that it was mostly successful. We played two rounds. Dante was the first player out (or perhaps the second player out the second game) which combined with his form means he wasn’t quite as good of a ball handler as I had expected. He is also SLOW. So he has endurance, but it is slow. It will be vitally important for Dante to hustle always to take advantage of his strength of endurance. Lucas won the first game with Jack M winning the second game. David H got second in both rounds, and was also the best at knocking players out. Good to see I had him accurately pegged as our best ball handler.
Honestly? Not quite sure what we did next. I feel like we did some sort of moving activity as I seem to recall another water break here before we went into our defensive stance activity. Dunno. After practicing our defensive stance we then did an activity where a defender had to stay a fixed distance away from a dribbler. I realized after we did this one time that I hadn’t really taught them how to move in the defensive stance.
So we went back and did some jumping. Taught two kinds of jumps. The first was quick jumps, which we soon changed, based on their suggestions, to “bunny jumps”. Basically it’s like a football drill. This teaches them the right motion on how to move in the defensive stance. Then we did all out jumps, two groups of ten, which when done right are quite tiring and the team mostly did them right.
We then went back to the shadowing drill. The defensive stances were, I must say, not quite as good as I had hoped. It’s the first real time that their skills weren’t as good, or better, than I expected.
We did some 1 inch shooting. I really emphasized the importance of shooting straight up, as the point of the drill is to really emphasize shooting form. After this, we ended practice with another game. It was virtually the same game as last time (with a relay) only this time they had to dribble down the full court first. We did best two out of three, but the same team won both times (though I do not recall who was on the team).
It had been a good practice and only a couple of players owed suicides and so I declared that no one had to run (didn’t say that some really had owed it) as it had been a great practice. The players had really displayed hustle, for instance always running to the places I had assigned, and so I felt the reward was deserved. I had been good about giving out permissions, but not quite as good about letting players know when they had earned one, so that’s something I want to improve on for the next practice.
We gathered around and I did the end practice with saying something positive about another team member routine that Steve and I sometimes did at the end of baseball practice. For their doggie bag, they were asked to practice to practice both of the jumps, including doing the bunny hop on one each foot. I also gave them a contact note card as I realized I had handed something to their parents but not them. I wanted to make sure to keep the door open to them, though I have no clue if they’ll take advantage of it.
This week remains a focus on individual skills. The following week we will start to focus on team skills more. I got a voice mail today from Noah’s mother asking for me to send along, or call with, a copy of the doggie bag. I promptly emailed it along. I’m thinking that I will have Noah run a half suicide to emphasize that the doggie bag is his responsibility not his mothers, especially since I had given him the contact card, before practice starts. Also of note is that I sent along our first email update of what we had done this past week and what our focus would be this upcoming week. It was a nice two paragraphs, which I think is the right amount.
Overall, the first week of practice went well. I think the team has improved and just as importantly I think I am growing nicely into the position of coach. However, I worry greatly about our first game. I worry about it. I’ve made it a point, though, not to talk about it with the players. I want them focused, for the time being, on themselves. I’m sure they’re doing a fine enough job of putting pressure on themselves without my saying anything.
So I arrive at the school, which is a different one than we practiced at on Monday, and I find the door locked. After being told on Monday that I was unexpected at the school, I had sent Emily an email. She assured me that all was taken care of and this was a mistake on their part. Anyhow, I finally get the attention of the janitor. I explain who we are. He starts telling me that he is the only there, we weren’t expected, and he is leaving at 7 (our practice was from 6-7:30). I walk with him to the school reservation schedule and not only does the Park District have the gym from 6-7:30 it has it until 9 o’clock. Janitor is still saying how he can’t stay. I thank him for letting us in and ask him to call somebody to see what can be done. He mutters and demurs, and I say there must be somebody he can call and thank him for his help, while expressing understanding how he doesn’t want to stay late. We part ways without formal resolution.
I get my first look at our Friday gym. Where as we practice at a middle school on Mondays, and so we have a gym that is plenty large, we practice at a 3rd and 4th grade school on Friday. This means that the court is perhaps ¾ of a high school size. It’s not ideal and so it means that drills and concepts that require a full length court will have to be run on Monday, while Fridays will likely be activities that only require a half court, at most.
When 6 rolls around we have the expected seven players. Dante, Jack P, and Lucas brought back their “doggie bag” while Tom wrote it out on a separate piece of paper saying he had done it. Each of them earned a permission (Jack M’s mom brought it when she picked him up). I reminded the rest of the team, when the H’s arrived, that they must bring the card. Failure, in the future, to do so would mean a suicide.
I get ready to start practice and I discover that I have left my practice plan in the car. Whoops. I actually had enough time I could have gone out to my car to get it, but decide that I know what I wanted to do well enough to go without the written form. We start off reviewing pivoting and do the ball holding drill. Something I noticed during the ball holding drill is that my ability to notice quickly what they were doing right and wrong had definitely picked up since Monday. Good to know practice is making me a better coach as well (as when I had run practice with my semi-competitive high school team we simply didn’t have enough practices to worry about much more than doing some basic team drills). The H’s arrived at 6:10 rather than 6:15 so that was good. The H’s arrived at 6:10 rather than 6:15 so that was good. After the H’s joined us we went into our continuous motion drill. As we have 9 players it meant that I got to run the drill with somebody. Obviously this makes it harder to simultaneously coach. I am thinking of doing a non-partner continuous motion drill tomorrow, but these kind of drills tend to be more complex and I worry that they’re not ready for such drills, so I think it’s likely that for the time being I will be getting some extra exercise. During the drill it was clear that Jack M was struggling. Dante and David continued at a fast steady pace the entire time. The stars, however, were Gordie and Tom who did the best job of doing no look passes. That is one of the major goals of what I have been trying to do, besides conditioning, with the continuous motion drills.
After a water break we had further practice with looking up when moving. Actually, first we did dribbling in place. Worked hard on the correct dribbling position with both hands. David and Jack P did the best job. Jack M and Dante struggled more, with Noah not far behind. Let me say at this point that I was wrong about Noah. Like completely wrong. I had a real hard time at the first practice with telling apart Jack and Noah and so it’s entirely possible that I had imputed on Noah problems that were not really his alone, but instead an amalgamation.
After practicing dribbling in place, something I did as a low activity cool down after the continuous motion as well, we went into half court diagonals. I would stand at the opposite side free throw line and they were expected to shout out how many fingers I was holding up. Tom and the Jacks had the hardest time remembering to keep their heads up.
After doing this several times we played a game of “Dribble Knock away”. Basically, while dribbling they had to try and knock away the balls of fellow players. If a player lost control of his ball then he was out. The court got increasingly smaller as more players were out. Obviously the idea was to promote dribbling with your head up since you had to be aware of your surrounding. At that it was mostly successful. We played two rounds. Dante was the first player out (or perhaps the second player out the second game) which combined with his form means he wasn’t quite as good of a ball handler as I had expected. He is also SLOW. So he has endurance, but it is slow. It will be vitally important for Dante to hustle always to take advantage of his strength of endurance. Lucas won the first game with Jack M winning the second game. David H got second in both rounds, and was also the best at knocking players out. Good to see I had him accurately pegged as our best ball handler.
Honestly? Not quite sure what we did next. I feel like we did some sort of moving activity as I seem to recall another water break here before we went into our defensive stance activity. Dunno. After practicing our defensive stance we then did an activity where a defender had to stay a fixed distance away from a dribbler. I realized after we did this one time that I hadn’t really taught them how to move in the defensive stance.
So we went back and did some jumping. Taught two kinds of jumps. The first was quick jumps, which we soon changed, based on their suggestions, to “bunny jumps”. Basically it’s like a football drill. This teaches them the right motion on how to move in the defensive stance. Then we did all out jumps, two groups of ten, which when done right are quite tiring and the team mostly did them right.
We then went back to the shadowing drill. The defensive stances were, I must say, not quite as good as I had hoped. It’s the first real time that their skills weren’t as good, or better, than I expected.
We did some 1 inch shooting. I really emphasized the importance of shooting straight up, as the point of the drill is to really emphasize shooting form. After this, we ended practice with another game. It was virtually the same game as last time (with a relay) only this time they had to dribble down the full court first. We did best two out of three, but the same team won both times (though I do not recall who was on the team).
It had been a good practice and only a couple of players owed suicides and so I declared that no one had to run (didn’t say that some really had owed it) as it had been a great practice. The players had really displayed hustle, for instance always running to the places I had assigned, and so I felt the reward was deserved. I had been good about giving out permissions, but not quite as good about letting players know when they had earned one, so that’s something I want to improve on for the next practice.
We gathered around and I did the end practice with saying something positive about another team member routine that Steve and I sometimes did at the end of baseball practice. For their doggie bag, they were asked to practice to practice both of the jumps, including doing the bunny hop on one each foot. I also gave them a contact note card as I realized I had handed something to their parents but not them. I wanted to make sure to keep the door open to them, though I have no clue if they’ll take advantage of it.
This week remains a focus on individual skills. The following week we will start to focus on team skills more. I got a voice mail today from Noah’s mother asking for me to send along, or call with, a copy of the doggie bag. I promptly emailed it along. I’m thinking that I will have Noah run a half suicide to emphasize that the doggie bag is his responsibility not his mothers, especially since I had given him the contact card, before practice starts. Also of note is that I sent along our first email update of what we had done this past week and what our focus would be this upcoming week. It was a nice two paragraphs, which I think is the right amount.
Overall, the first week of practice went well. I think the team has improved and just as importantly I think I am growing nicely into the position of coach. However, I worry greatly about our first game. I worry about it. I’ve made it a point, though, not to talk about it with the players. I want them focused, for the time being, on themselves. I’m sure they’re doing a fine enough job of putting pressure on themselves without my saying anything.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
10/16 Practice Report
So last night was our first practice (editor’s note: I got through most of this post on Tuesday. Then the bell rang for class and I put this aside where it has languished until now) with the parents meeting having followed. I remain encouraged and upbeat.
When 6:00 rolled around only half the team was there. Gordie, Jack P, Jack M, Noah, and Lucas were the ones there on time. I waited two minutes extra, something I don’t believe in doing, and then started practice. Normally, I start practice with a sit down and overview of the practice, but I postponed this until later. I had been expecting Dante at 6:15, but didn’t know where the H’s or Tom were. Just as I had gotten the team on the line, Tom showed up, which was good.
We started off with doing our animal claws. I said I knew it was simple, but some people always had problems with it. The idea behind the animal claws is to show the correct position on how to hold the ball, something I wasn’t really taught until 8th grade. Several of them got into it (as I told them that they could of course make appropriate animal sounds). Right off the bat, I found that Jack P is one sharp kid. I would give an instruction and he would manage to honor the exact wording of the instruction while still doing something goofy. For now, I find it endearing and fun as it keeps me on my toes. When we did some more serious and challenging activities later, he didn’t do it either which tells me he likely knows how to judge the right situation for such antics.
After we practiced our animal claws we moved onto doing it with a ball. This whole thing took me a little longer than I would have liked because as I went around to each kid to see that they were doing it correctly. It is here that having another person would have helped tremendously, but oh well, what are you going to do?
We were wasting a lot of time at this point as well as they were not paying as much attention as I would have liked. Right as we finished doing the animal claws with the ball the H’s arrived. We then broke up into partners, with one group of three. They then practiced taking the ball from a another player. This is another way to work on grip and reinforces how to catch a pass or pull down a rebound.
I then asked them to form a horseshoe and no one was really paying attention. Gave them until a count of 10 to do it, which I counted out loud. Exactly 1 kid was sitting down. Couple others were mildly going towards it, a few others were trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing, and about half the team was nearly oblivious, until we got to about 2, that they were supposed to be doing anything. And so it was time for the good ole wind sprint. Made them run to half court and back . The fastest two got to avoid doing it a second time. Didn’t have much of a problem the rest of practice with their paying attention.
After that we gathered around and I did my introduction. Talked about hustle. I asked the question “What is my job on the team?” Only a few players were willing to venture a guess. Clearly they were nervous, as it was a gimme question. We established that it was my role to coach them. I talked about what that meant. Talked about how as players their job was to be supportive of each other and to work on improving themselves. Introduced my system of permissions and suicides. If you hustle (or win certain team games) you earn a permission. If you aren’t paying attention, or aren’t hustling, you get a suicide. Every player starts off with a suicide so you have to end up in the positive for permissions to avoid running at least one. A couple of players had earned a permission already.
We then went into our “continuous motion” drill. Rather than just have the players run laps, I have them do something. For this continuous motion I basically had them do bounce and underhand passes, as well as doing the “steal the ball” while in motion. They started off sprinting, and despite my encouraging them to go at a jogging pace, flamed out after 7 minutes. I expect them to be able to do a lot more than that and soon. I’m hoping that they pace themselves better next time. We then had a water break.
We then did wrist flexes. There is the shooting wrist and the dribbling wrist. According to the Basketball Coach’s Bible, one of several books I’ve read, a few simple wrist drills can dramatically improve performance. As the drills are simple, I went for them.
We then talked about the importance of pivoting, before practicing that. Several of the players had problems, but improved as we practiced. I’m a strong believer in pivots (and cuts) and so they will get better if only through repetition.
Following this we did one inch shots. It forces players to square up correctly and puts the emphasis on the wrists and the legs. It is a hard drill at first and as expected the team struggled with it. However, it really does force players to develop better shooting form and so I will be staying with it. We divided up into three groups and went for into this.
We then went to one foot shots. This allows players to really focus on technique and so we went over proper shooting technique here. As the shot is incredibly shot, there should be a high percentage of shots made. The close shots let them focus on the technique. They take multiple shots from the left, center, and right. After we do this, we are at 7:15. I decide to run our game. Basically it is just a relay contest of the one foot shot. Fun was had. The winners (who I don’t remember) earned a permission.
We then did our suicides, with Brian, Jack P, Noah, Scott, and Tom not having to run any. Jack M ended up with 2 and Dante got a second when, for the millionth time it seems like, he did not touch the ground as he was running.
We then had our end of practice meeting. I complemented them on a good practice. And I gave them their “doggie bag”, which is basically just a homework assignment. For this assignment they were to practice one of three things each day between our Monday and Friday practice: pivoting, wrist flicks, and defensive stance taps. I had planned on getting to defensive taps, but it simply did not happen. Having them practice, however, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world and so I didn’t worry too much about that being in there.
It was then time for the parents meeting which went well. I had 7 of the 10 show up. I knew 1 couldn’t make it. I have since talked to the other two so that’s good. The parents seemed to buy my philosophy well enough. So all-in-all a nice first practice.
When 6:00 rolled around only half the team was there. Gordie, Jack P, Jack M, Noah, and Lucas were the ones there on time. I waited two minutes extra, something I don’t believe in doing, and then started practice. Normally, I start practice with a sit down and overview of the practice, but I postponed this until later. I had been expecting Dante at 6:15, but didn’t know where the H’s or Tom were. Just as I had gotten the team on the line, Tom showed up, which was good.
We started off with doing our animal claws. I said I knew it was simple, but some people always had problems with it. The idea behind the animal claws is to show the correct position on how to hold the ball, something I wasn’t really taught until 8th grade. Several of them got into it (as I told them that they could of course make appropriate animal sounds). Right off the bat, I found that Jack P is one sharp kid. I would give an instruction and he would manage to honor the exact wording of the instruction while still doing something goofy. For now, I find it endearing and fun as it keeps me on my toes. When we did some more serious and challenging activities later, he didn’t do it either which tells me he likely knows how to judge the right situation for such antics.
After we practiced our animal claws we moved onto doing it with a ball. This whole thing took me a little longer than I would have liked because as I went around to each kid to see that they were doing it correctly. It is here that having another person would have helped tremendously, but oh well, what are you going to do?
We were wasting a lot of time at this point as well as they were not paying as much attention as I would have liked. Right as we finished doing the animal claws with the ball the H’s arrived. We then broke up into partners, with one group of three. They then practiced taking the ball from a another player. This is another way to work on grip and reinforces how to catch a pass or pull down a rebound.
I then asked them to form a horseshoe and no one was really paying attention. Gave them until a count of 10 to do it, which I counted out loud. Exactly 1 kid was sitting down. Couple others were mildly going towards it, a few others were trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing, and about half the team was nearly oblivious, until we got to about 2, that they were supposed to be doing anything. And so it was time for the good ole wind sprint. Made them run to half court and back . The fastest two got to avoid doing it a second time. Didn’t have much of a problem the rest of practice with their paying attention.
After that we gathered around and I did my introduction. Talked about hustle. I asked the question “What is my job on the team?” Only a few players were willing to venture a guess. Clearly they were nervous, as it was a gimme question. We established that it was my role to coach them. I talked about what that meant. Talked about how as players their job was to be supportive of each other and to work on improving themselves. Introduced my system of permissions and suicides. If you hustle (or win certain team games) you earn a permission. If you aren’t paying attention, or aren’t hustling, you get a suicide. Every player starts off with a suicide so you have to end up in the positive for permissions to avoid running at least one. A couple of players had earned a permission already.
We then went into our “continuous motion” drill. Rather than just have the players run laps, I have them do something. For this continuous motion I basically had them do bounce and underhand passes, as well as doing the “steal the ball” while in motion. They started off sprinting, and despite my encouraging them to go at a jogging pace, flamed out after 7 minutes. I expect them to be able to do a lot more than that and soon. I’m hoping that they pace themselves better next time. We then had a water break.
We then did wrist flexes. There is the shooting wrist and the dribbling wrist. According to the Basketball Coach’s Bible, one of several books I’ve read, a few simple wrist drills can dramatically improve performance. As the drills are simple, I went for them.
We then talked about the importance of pivoting, before practicing that. Several of the players had problems, but improved as we practiced. I’m a strong believer in pivots (and cuts) and so they will get better if only through repetition.
Following this we did one inch shots. It forces players to square up correctly and puts the emphasis on the wrists and the legs. It is a hard drill at first and as expected the team struggled with it. However, it really does force players to develop better shooting form and so I will be staying with it. We divided up into three groups and went for into this.
We then went to one foot shots. This allows players to really focus on technique and so we went over proper shooting technique here. As the shot is incredibly shot, there should be a high percentage of shots made. The close shots let them focus on the technique. They take multiple shots from the left, center, and right. After we do this, we are at 7:15. I decide to run our game. Basically it is just a relay contest of the one foot shot. Fun was had. The winners (who I don’t remember) earned a permission.
We then did our suicides, with Brian, Jack P, Noah, Scott, and Tom not having to run any. Jack M ended up with 2 and Dante got a second when, for the millionth time it seems like, he did not touch the ground as he was running.
We then had our end of practice meeting. I complemented them on a good practice. And I gave them their “doggie bag”, which is basically just a homework assignment. For this assignment they were to practice one of three things each day between our Monday and Friday practice: pivoting, wrist flicks, and defensive stance taps. I had planned on getting to defensive taps, but it simply did not happen. Having them practice, however, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world and so I didn’t worry too much about that being in there.
It was then time for the parents meeting which went well. I had 7 of the 10 show up. I knew 1 couldn’t make it. I have since talked to the other two so that’s good. The parents seemed to buy my philosophy well enough. So all-in-all a nice first practice.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Well I made my phone calls tonight. Only I came up with a good solution. So I don’t want to talk to the parents on the phone? Well then I won’t. Instead I simply reminded them of the time of our first practice and announced a parent’s meeting after the practice. I like to do things in person, so I’ll do it in person. I was pleased with that solution to my mental Gordian Knot.
I had seven phone calls to make and I completed 5 of them. Of course I only reached 7 of my players. That’s the disadvantage to having three kids from one family. I really do have a fear that they’ll go on a trip or something and someone will be sick and someone else injured and we’ll have 5 players. But hopefully that fear will not come to fruition. Hopefully they’re all about the sports and won’t miss a game or practice all year. That’s the hope.
Nothing of real note from any of the parents except Dante’s father. Dante, as you recall, is the one who plays travel soccer all year long, in addition to basketball. Dante’s Dad was the only one who inquired into my philosophy about winning and such. He liked what I had to say. He also got in how Dante doesn’t really like suicides. I hope it’s just that particular drill as opposed to running, since, as Dad and I joked about, Dante is going to be running A LOT. He’s going to run in soccer and gawd knows he’s going to be running at basketball.
I spoke to most of the kids on the phone as well. I’d forgotten how awkward the phone skills of 4th grade boys can be, since well, I don’t normally talk to 4th grade boys on the phone. A
So that’s tonight’s update. I’m getting very excited. I see no reason we can’t be good and win some games and that’s exciting. I think I have a nice group of kids, and that’s good.
I had seven phone calls to make and I completed 5 of them. Of course I only reached 7 of my players. That’s the disadvantage to having three kids from one family. I really do have a fear that they’ll go on a trip or something and someone will be sick and someone else injured and we’ll have 5 players. But hopefully that fear will not come to fruition. Hopefully they’re all about the sports and won’t miss a game or practice all year. That’s the hope.
Nothing of real note from any of the parents except Dante’s father. Dante, as you recall, is the one who plays travel soccer all year long, in addition to basketball. Dante’s Dad was the only one who inquired into my philosophy about winning and such. He liked what I had to say. He also got in how Dante doesn’t really like suicides. I hope it’s just that particular drill as opposed to running, since, as Dad and I joked about, Dante is going to be running A LOT. He’s going to run in soccer and gawd knows he’s going to be running at basketball.
I spoke to most of the kids on the phone as well. I’d forgotten how awkward the phone skills of 4th grade boys can be, since well, I don’t normally talk to 4th grade boys on the phone. A
So that’s tonight’s update. I’m getting very excited. I see no reason we can’t be good and win some games and that’s exciting. I think I have a nice group of kids, and that’s good.
Sunday, October 8, 2006
So I've made exactly zero phone calls. This is partly because I absolutely positively depise the phone and so I have to work hard to overcome my natural aversion to it. It is also because I don't have a "script". I haven't figured out exactly what I want to say to the parents in these phone calls. The kids? I know exactly what I want to talk to them about. I would do better in person. I am going to have to get over it soon though as the clock is ticking.
Friday, October 6, 2006
Coaches' Meeting
Finally have an update. Last night was the coaches’ meeting for the league. Turns out there is an A and a B division for the league. My team plays in the B division, which is the less competitive/smaller city league. I get to the meeting and find Emily, who if you remember, is my Park District contact. She hands me this ridiculously thick manila envelope and says “Here are some employment forms for you to fill out.” Let’s just say that if the whole packet was indeed forms I would be filling them out from last night until forever. In reality, more than half of the packet is a part time employee manual.
I also get, for the first time, a list of my contact information. Finally! This gives me the ability to start calling and talking to my players and their parents, something I’ve wanted to do before the first practice.
The main purpose of the meeting is to firm up the schedule. We play our first game on November 19th, giving us about a month, or eight practices, to get ready before the first game. Our first game is against my home town, and will be a home game. I am excited to be playing them right off the bat as I talked a fair amount with their coach last night and he seemed like a good guy. I also have the advantage of knowing some of the players on the team. Not sure what kind of advantage this actually is, since I don’t actually know how well any of them play basketball, but it must be some sort of advantage, right?
I am lucky to have off several days coming up and one of my goals is to get a tentative agenda for the practices laid out. 12 hours hardly seems like a sufficient amount of time to get a basketball team together with all I want to do.
Besides the rosters, the other important thing that happened last night is I got a copy of the league’s rules. So basically we play a real game of basketball. 4 quarters, with seven minutes in each quarter, foul-outs, bonus, the whole shebang. I get 3 full time outs plus 2 30 second time outs each half [editor's note: This is incorrect. I actually only get 3 full and 2 30 second time outs per game]. 3 point lines, where there are some, etc, etc. The one league particularity is that teams can only press in the 2nd and 4th quarters with no press allowed if a team is up by 10 or more points in the 4th.
Updates will be forth coming as I make phone calls and put together a tentative 4 week practice schedule.
I also get, for the first time, a list of my contact information. Finally! This gives me the ability to start calling and talking to my players and their parents, something I’ve wanted to do before the first practice.
The main purpose of the meeting is to firm up the schedule. We play our first game on November 19th, giving us about a month, or eight practices, to get ready before the first game. Our first game is against my home town, and will be a home game. I am excited to be playing them right off the bat as I talked a fair amount with their coach last night and he seemed like a good guy. I also have the advantage of knowing some of the players on the team. Not sure what kind of advantage this actually is, since I don’t actually know how well any of them play basketball, but it must be some sort of advantage, right?
I am lucky to have off several days coming up and one of my goals is to get a tentative agenda for the practices laid out. 12 hours hardly seems like a sufficient amount of time to get a basketball team together with all I want to do.
Besides the rosters, the other important thing that happened last night is I got a copy of the league’s rules. So basically we play a real game of basketball. 4 quarters, with seven minutes in each quarter, foul-outs, bonus, the whole shebang. I get 3 full time outs plus 2 30 second time outs each half [editor's note: This is incorrect. I actually only get 3 full and 2 30 second time outs per game]. 3 point lines, where there are some, etc, etc. The one league particularity is that teams can only press in the 2nd and 4th quarters with no press allowed if a team is up by 10 or more points in the 4th.
Updates will be forth coming as I make phone calls and put together a tentative 4 week practice schedule.
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