First 2 practices

Well we are two practices into our season. Sort of. Yesterday, we had only four kids. More on that soon.

As I did last year with GL, before our first practice I sent out an information packet. This year I changed it up a bit. I shortened the defensive section, eliminated the offensive section, because of a new system I’m trying there, and added a goal setting page. I think this mailing really helps to set a tone for the season. All of the kids except Grant and Michael remember their goal setting sheet.

At the first practice we started by going over team rules and expectations. This took about 15 minutes, though there was interaction and questions in there so it wasn’t just me talking. I still wish I could figure out a way to impart the same information but not do it in fifteen minutes. The way I do it works, but I would love if there was a way that worked better.

The Sunday before our first practice I called everyone to remind them of the practice time and place. I learn then that Josh, our anticipated point guard and probably one of the two best players on the team, is going to miss practice with a foot injury. Before Friday’s practice, I learn that this foot injury is more likely something with the growth plate putting him out at least two weeks.

After the intro talk we did our continuous motion exercise with dribbling. Continuous motion is my version of conditioning. The idea that the players are (obviously) continuously in motion, though I always incorporate basketball skills with it. This CM is the most traditional one I do where players do laps, using both right and left hands. At the end I do some sort of partner passing, for Monday’s practice we did bounce passing. The group managed to go 8 and a half minutes before they were spent, which wasn’t too bad for a first practice, though less than the 10-15 I think a team needs to be able to do to be really effective. There were also certain kids who were either plainly out of shape or just lazy. The trick is for me to figure out which is which.

Next we had a water break. But before the water break started I gave everyone a water bottle. One of my goals this season is to run a tighter practice. I want to make sure I’m always 100% prepared, as I had some practices last season with GL where I had a practice skeleton but that was it. With one team to coach vs two I am not going to tolerate that from myself. So to help run a tighter practice, I want to cut down on the water break time, but not cut down on the amount of water drunk. By giving them water bottles, I hope to avoid the drinking fountain bottleneck that occurs otherwise.

Back from water break we did our Fundamental 5. This part of practice is there to make sure that in the hustle and bustle of the season the simplest fundamentals are still taught. It’s called Fundamental 5 because the idea is to spend five minutes or so on it. Just long enough to teach or review a skill not so long as to be boring.

Following this I started to introduce our offense. The bad news was that I made a mistake. As the offense is new to me, I mixed up the passing fundamental (which wasn’t our focus) and the penetration fundamental (which was). Fortunately, the mix-up wasn’t too severe and at the second practice I explained I’d “adjusted” the offense based on what I saw. In a case like this where I’ve already built up some credibility I would admit my mistake, but as the players are still learning whether they can trust me or not as a coach I decided this was the route to go.

The offense we’ll be using this year is called the Read and React. The basic idea is to teach players what they should be doing on the court based on reading what the ball handler does. There is a structure to the offense, but there are no plays. I’ve always liked structured offense and this offense simply takes many of the concepts I had been trying to teach and codifies it in a simple and easily understood way. That’s the good news. The bad news is that because there is a formal system, rather than my “rules” there is a lot more stuff to learn. And for our first game I don’t think they’ll have learned everything. More accurately, while they will have been taught much of what they will need to know, I can’t expect them to have mastered it.

As we were going through this I made an even bigger mistake. I had asked them to have some man to man defense. Except the 4 players played zone. And while I was knew something wasn’t quite right with the defense, I was too honed in on the defense to think about what it was until I was driving home. Whoops.

Following our offensive work we played some dribble knockaway which they definitely enjoyed. Following this we did “the human knot” team building exercise. The group worked remarkably well together and were able to figure it out very quickly for a group of 5th grade boys. I feel like we did something else at practice, but my notes aren’t with me as I type this up. All in all it was a good first practice from them, less than stellar on my part.

At Friday’s practice, I knew going into it that 4 of the 10 players would be missing due to a birthday party. Josh’s dad emailed me with the injury update so that was 5. I get a call about 45 minutes before practice from Leonoardo’s mother telling me he fell and is it ok if he misses practice. What we can do at a practice with 5 vs 4 is dramatically different, but I do excuse him. I wonder about the injury since Leonardo was one of the kids who was either out of shape or lazy, but what can you do? Hopefully it was a legit injury but he’s alright, if that makes sense.

At the practice I start very upbeat and explain what a great practice we’re going to have with only 4 players. This is the end of my enthusiasm not because they were doing anything wrong, but because I was dead tired and just had no energy left. This is a shame because it was, after all, only the second practice.

At the practice we did our defensive footwork continuous motion, did a Fundamental 5 breaking down one of the parts of the layup (since the team’s layup form was abysmal at tryouts), spent time reviewing the offense, which saw the four players practicing, Michael, Seth, Matthew, and Mason, getting lots of good reps. Next we did the Mikan drill, which works on put backs. First I had each kid do it individually and then I partnered them up and paired the two teams against each other. We then continued on to some Animal Rebounding, which saw Matthew win, due to some smart rebounding, followed by Michael, Seth, and Mason.

We concluded practice with some ball handling work. First I had them just shout out the number of fingers I held up. We then did this while moving. I did this slowly at first, and then sped up how quickly I did it. After a couple of trips up and down with this, moving at a good speed, I turned it into a game where they would dribble forward while I held up an even amount of fingers, while dribbling in place holding up an odd amount. I have seen Red/Light green light, which this basically was, in coaching books before, but the odd even twist was something I hadn’t seen and something I liked because it forced them to think about what they saw, just as they would in a game. At the end of practice we ran suicides. Mason was the only one who had one, and he had two. Everyone had earned a permission for beating the time I thought they could do the CM for before people started to show fatigue. Unfortunately, Mason lost Animal Rebounding (which gets a suicide) and forgot his Doggie Bag (which gets a suicide). So he had two suicides to run. To their credit first Michael and then Matthew stepped up to run a suicide with him.

I felt good about this practice. I hate the fact that we have only an hours worth of practice time on Friday and hated the fact that only 4 kids were at the practice, but it was a good practice. They all learned stuff, and hopefully left feeling good about themselves.

The bad news is that I simply can’t see us being ready on Nov 2 to play games with only 2.5 more hours of practice time. I think next year I am going to reschedule games to ensure that I have 3 or 4 weeks of practice time before we start our season. Better to double up games later in the season when we know what we’re doing than start before we’re ready. Of course that’s no help for this year. Of course losing this practice for most of the people wasn’t much help either. No matter, as I’m committed to coaching the best I can, and if the team comes through, great. If not, not. That is beyond my control.