Welcome back to the further travails of my efforts to coach a successful youth basketball team.
As you recall, we had no practice last Friday because of a school event. And practice on Monday was rescheduled for Wednesday. The problem arises with the rescheduling when I get an email Tuesday. Lucas’s mother is asking about our practice on Wednesday since her six year old is scheduled to practice at the same time. I email Emily at the Park District. Turns out I asked to reschedule on Wednesday and she had no gym on Wednesday so gave me Tuesday’s date. I didn’t pay close attention to this and so I blew it. By the time I’ve figured out what has happened it’s 5:00 Tuesday. So there goes that practice.
So that brings us to Friday’s practice. We have too much to do and not enough time to do it. But that’s going to have to be OK. We do a short stretching session and then go into our offense. I show them a few things that they can do with the offense. And well, it goes OK. I think with a another practice worth of trying it, it would go more than OK. However, I think that in many ways they’re going to play an ugly game of basketball come Sunday.
After our offensive practice, which we do for about a half hour, we practice our inbounds play. There is a lot of teaching involved, but people seem to pick it up well enough. It’s a simple stack. We line up and then on the signal from the in bounder the players all do something different. All in all the play seems to work well enough, especially considering that the defenders knew what the offensive players were going to do. So that is good. Now the problem is that this play won’t likely work as well against a zone.
In fact that’s my big fear is that they will be playing a zone. If so it’s going to be an early time out. I know they’ll be able to adjust to playing against a zone, but we haven’t really practiced it. Hopefully the HP coach feels the way I do about man-to-man, and I think he will, and so we will see that kind of defense.
Lastly we practiced our tip-offs. Overall that worked fine too. We concluded practice with my reminding them about some of the nuts and bolts of the games. Things like checking in at the scorer’s table and telling who you were guarding when subbing in.
The thing is that overall we’re still not playing well as a team. I feel good about where their individual skills are at. However, we’re not really playing as a basketball team and that concerns me. I am hoping that our opponents will be just as lost as we are.
One other note from practice. Gordie and Jack M were seriously not getting along. There was pushing, grabbing, etc. I took them aside after practice. It seems that there has been ill feelings before, then things had gotten better, and now things are not going as well again. We talked about how we’re on the same team and that this sort of behavior wouldn’t be accepted. They both got the message, in theory, but we’ll see how this translates to reality.
My original plan for Sunday had been to start Noah, Gordie, Dante, Jack P, and Tom. However, in my talk with Gordie and Jack I talked about how on Sunday there would be times when they’d have to play together and if we were going to do well as a team they’d have to play well together. I am thinking, to reinforce this point, have Jack start in the place of Noah. It would certainly get the message across, I think. Dante, Jack P, and Tom are regular starters for the time being, though I will be mixing things up from time to time to get everybody their promised start, with Scott and David, who are off on a jaunt to LA being our other two starters.
I don’t see that I’ve done a complete run down of the team in a while so it seems like before our first game would be a good time to do that.
Brian –
Good: Remember him? Well word through the grapevine is that he could be rejoining our team as early as December 4th from his ankle injury. I had originally heard more like January, or even February so this is good.
Bad: Who knows how quickly he’ll be able to catch up. The one good point of our being behind where I want to be team wise is that it should be easier for him to catch up. However, he’ll have missed out on some of the conditioning. So he likely won’t return at the same caliber as when he left us. I think we’ve had better chemistry without him. Hopefully we’ll be solid here when he comes back.
Dante –
Good: Good endurance. He gets how to rebound. He has a nice shot so some of the kids have taken to calling him Yao since he is our tallest player and can shoot from the outside.
Bad: He is S L O W. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I honestly don’t know how well his slow will play out. There’s not too much I can do it about it, all things considered, but hope for the best.
David –
Good: Good basketball intelligence and ability. For instance when we were running our in bounds play and his defender was guarding the play more than him, he did something slightly different and broke free for an easy inbounds pass and basket. I’ve talked about his ability before. He’s the only player I really feel good about taking long distance shots.
Bad: As one of the taller members of the team he’s going to have play against bigger guys and in the post more than he’s used to.
Gordie:
Good – A fun kid and helps keep things light. A fairly good defender.
Bad – Takes shots he shouldn’t take. Can get trapped fairly easily on defense.
Jack M –
Good: Has good court vision, he rarely makes a bad pass. Also has a quick first step on his dribble. He will likely bring the ball up for us often.
Bad: He doesn’t seem to like the fact that I don’t want him shooting long distance shots. He’s not the most likable kid which has already had an effect with one player and meant that during our inbounds drill complained about what the 1 and 2 players do, despite the fact that the 1 player is one of the most important as he does two different things to get open.
Jack P –
Good: This kid is a tenacious defender and one of the better shots on the team. He is so quiet it is easy to forget how good he is, but he could easily be the second best player on the team. He was our best in bounder of the five I tried (Lucas, Tom, David, Jack P, and Scott).
Bad: Not a whole lot to say except that since he’s a new kid some of the players on the team haven’t figured out how good he is yet and so he doesn’t get the passes he deserves on offense, despite my prodding, that he deserves.
Lucas –
Good: He’s a nice kid who never complains about anything and will always attempt to do what is asked of him.
Bad: He’s not the sharpest kid on the team. I had to walk through the inbounds play with him several times at each of the positions he did before he got it. He clearly doesn’t like the fact that he has to play post/center positions, but, well, tough. He could likely see a pickup in his minutes once he masters some of the things, like always screening away from the ball, but until then his action will likely be more limited as he kind of plays confused.
Noah –
Good: He picks up things quickly. He is solid all around on offense.
Bad: His defense could stand some improvement. He gets beat off the dribble too much.
Scott –
Good: Solid player who works hard. In particular I like how he seems to have a good sense of where to be on the court.
Bad: His skills are better suited to a forward position, but he’s not really big enough to be a forward. Not as big of a deal on offense, where we play a motion, but does matter on defense.
Tom –
Good: He is the heart of our team. He does most things well and is one of our better shots.
Bad: He hasn’t seemed happy at the last couple of practices, so I don’t know what’s going on there. He has a slow first step on defense.
So there you have it. I am just petrified that we are going to get blown out. I haven’t done as good of a job as I should have in getting them ready for this date. The first game is important and so despite the fact that I stress it’s a long season having a blowout first game is NOT what I want.
Hopefully when I write you tomorrow, my fears will have been misplaced and I will be writing to you about the 1 and 0 Spartans.
Showing posts with label Emily. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emily. Show all posts
Saturday, November 18, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Tryouts
I was hoping to get this typed up before I went to tryouts today, but it was not to be. The last two days have been very informative. I really feel like good grasp of most of these kid’s skills. This is certainly a change from the first day. So that part is good. The part that is bad? Right now I have a basketball team of 9 players. I have two players on the cusp and I could end up taking one or both of them and don’t know which it’ll be.
Yesterday we did a few drills. We started with a 3 on 2, 2 on 1 weave drill. Then we went to zig-zag dribbling. They were always to use the hand they were dribbling towards, so left if going left, and right if going right. I was actually very impressed overall with how well many of these kids were able to dribble with both of their hands. However, I decided, upon further reflection, that the width we were doing was too small. We ended up repeating this today first thing so that we could use the full court before the 5th graders arrived. I was able to see a lot more distinctions when we did it tonight.
We also did several passing drills with two man teams doing a slide with chest and overhead passes, along with a jogging bounce pass back and forth. We also did a 45 second, how many 6-9 foot jump shots can you make. We ended with some 3 on 3 games. The 3 on 3 games? Disaster. I learned very little worthwhile. I feel like we did something else, but it is forgotten at this point.
Coming out of day 2 a huge burden was taken off my shoulders. All three of the H triplets were going to make the team. Brian, our friend with the broken ankle, is a fairly good guard. I really don’t like his attitude, but it is not so bad as to be a major problem. Scott seems like he’s going to be a good forward. I still have no clue where I’m going to play David, who was once again the best player on the court. I mean he’s likely the best ball handler we have, but he’s also one of the taller players, on a team that is fairly short. Anyhow, this is the sort of problem that I like to have, and I have a bit to figure things out.
Also showing real promise was Dante. He’s one of the two tallest kids out there, besides Asher (who was the kid who reminded me of me in 4th grade). Dante showed good to very good abilities to dribble, shoot, and rebound. He’s exactly the sort of center I had hoped to have: A threat (as much as any of them are) from the outside and able to handle the ball. Fits into the motion offense I expected to run.
Let me diverge from the tryouts here for a second. I went into tryouts with an open mind. I haven’t really choreographed what I expected the offense or defense to be because I wanted to see their skills first. But, as I knew the community, they were what I expected. Mostly a group of short kids. Their dribbling skills were better than I expected and their shooting about what I thought it would be. Anyhow, my plan is to spread the floor, as even tall 4th graders don’t tend to be huge, and teach them how to move without the ball in order to create inside shots. Most of these kids cannot shoot, really, beyond 12, and for many 10 foot is the outer range of where they should be shooting.
Anyhow, so Dante makes the team. Leaving the gym that night I knew that we had a team of 5:
The Hs, Dante, and Jack P. Jack P is another taller kid with good dribbling and shooting skills. He’s a step below Dante in height, and could see some limited time at Center, but will more likely be seeing time in the 3 and 4 spots.
I went home and entered the numbers for both the objective and subjective drills. Came up with a weighted and un-weighted formula to rank them with. Based on that analysis I got two more players; both surprised me at the time as they had not really made an impression, but based on observations tonight both definitely deserved it. Noah was one of them. A shooting/point guard, even possibly a small forward, he’s got a great first step for a penetrating dribble and is a very accurate lay-up shooter. The other player to make it was Jack M. Interestingly, I had a fairly hard time telling Noah and Jack apart for a bit as they both have about the same skin tone and have the same hair cut. I do think I have it down now, though. Anyhow, Jack did very well defensively and showed good ability to dribble with both hands. He’ll be a point/shooting guard for us.
That gave me 7 players who I knew would make the team. I also had ruled out two. Asher was one of them. He actually turned out to be a great rebounder, but really all the other parts of his game are just terrible. My decision was reaffirmed when I learned before tryouts tonight that he’s actually had extensive basketball training. Hence the reason why he had surprised me by knowing of the “hot shots” drill. For a kid who has had all the background he’s had, his fundamentals are just appalling. I thought he was a kid who might just need a thousand lay-ups so he could not look like an octopus when he shoots. But that likely is wrong. He just doesn’t have it. Oh well. Asher also drove me nuts since he took every opportunity he could to sit down. I asked him if he was tired, and he said no. I let him know that he shouldn’t sit down then. Anyhow Asher was out.
Also out was Matt. Matt was one of only two kids, along with Miles not to attend day 2. Matt was slow and unskilled. No real getting around it. I actually wondered if he’d even show up today. He did and my limited observations only more than confirmed what I thought.
That left 7 kids who I was undecided about:
Miles
Tom
Nick
Cameron
David R
Lucas
Gordie
Tom was a virtual lock to make the team. The real problem was that he was a noticeable step below some other kids at some important skills for both the 1 and 2 positions, which were the spots he seemed most comfortable at. He did have good hustle and a good sense of how to move on the court. Considering the offense I want to run this latter trait was what made him a virtual lock to make the team. In fact were it not for his thoroughly mediocre shooting scores I’d like have already put him on the team.
Nick was nearly put on the cut list, but I decided to leave him off. However, he did not come tonight and as such his performance did not improve, making him an easy cut. He did have fairly good defensive skills, though not substantially better than several other players. This means this postive was more than negated by his terrible offensive skills. He wasn’t a particularly great hustler either. He also sucked his shirts. I know this last thing might seem inconsequential but it was actually a fairly big minus in my book. I want my players to play fearlessly out there. That was one way I made basketball teams, because I was (and am) fearless on the court. I’m not afraid to take a charge or set a hard pick or dive for the loose ball. Anyhow, I want fearless players and a kid who sucks his shirt at age 9 is not a fearless kid..
Then there is Cameron. Cameron is a blob. He doesn’t do anything great, but he doesn’t do anything poorly either. More about Cameron later.
David R was the kid who yesterday I just loved his attitude. I continued to love his attitude. I went into tonight looking for something, anything, to justify putting him on the team.
Lucas, was a kid who I didn’t have much of a sense for. His weighted scores, which gave more weight to the objective things we’d done, were so-so.
Finally there was Gordie. Gordie showed moments of skill. However, I knew heading into the day that he’d be a borderline player, with me not wanting to take him. The reason for this was that he was CONSTANTLY not paying attention or needing me to call him over or asking him not to shoot a basket while some other kid was doing his shooting drill. Before tryouts started today the 5th/6th grade coach asked me about him. I told him that he was borderline leaning towards no. The coach explained that he knew the family well and had coached his brother on a couple of teams, and that the brother had the same personality. Good to know it runs in the family.
Miles had not impressed me during the first night’s tryout. However, he was the kid who I first met who had a good spirit. I thought that perhaps there was more that he was capable of, that I simply hadn’t seen. Before tryouts tonight I met his father. His father has an unbelievable background, having founded the 4th grade travel team, done all sorts of JCC sports, founded, and is currently president of, a small fry team. I really liked the guy. It gave me renewed hope that Miles would have more to show me.
Several players had told me they’d be a minute or two late. So when the opportunity arose with 4 of us there to play a game of knockout, I took it. I won. We then played two more games, with more kids joining in each time, which I also won. I’m sure it’ll be a big relief to you to know that I could beat a bunch of 9 year olds. The players all really enjoyed it though, which was good. I let the kids play a fourth game, which only got about ¾ finished before we started tryouts.
As I mentioned we started with full court zig-zag dribbling. After doing full court once we did to half court and back as the 5th graders were starting to trickle in. Next we played a game of “Man in the Middle”. The kids were about 10 feet apart. Person in the middle. The two people on the outside could throw chest or bounce passes to their partner while the man in the middle tried to intercept. This did not turn out nearly as well I had hoped and I ended up speeding it up, though I did get to see a couple of kids do the sort of passes I wanted to see.
My goal tonight was to focus on 6 kids who I didn’t know about. By the end of man in the middle, and based on seeing him play lightening, I knew that Miles, bless his heart, just didn’t have what it took and neither did David R. I really liked both kids, but a travel basketball team just is not the right place for them right now. In happier news, Lucas had impressed me during knockout and continued to impress me during the first few drills and moved into the likely make it category.
Next we divided into 3 teams of 4, as there were only 12 players there. Besides Nick, the H triplets were not there (which was not unexpected). I tried to put 1 center person (which ended up being Asher, Dante, and Lucas), 1 forward (Jack M, Tom, as if he could play forward his playing time would be greatly increased, and Cameron), and 2 guards. I also tried to roughly balance the teams talent wise. I also told the kids who to match up against, though I did not state what position I’d put them at.
The scrimmage proved to be quite informative, in the confirm what I already know sense. Asher, for instance, not only can’t shoot but LOVES to shoot. To the great annoyance of his team mates. Noah impressed me with his ability to penetrate. Lucas tried to play guard until I told him “if you make the team you will be at forward or center, so play there”. He didn’t like it but gave the position his best, which was nice to see. He did a nice enough job. It became clear that Tom could not play forward. That’s a shame as it greatly reduces his utility since I have enough guards, even if I use the 3 as a semi-guard, as is likely. He did, however, again show his ability to move around without the ball to great effect.
More frustrating was Gordie who proved an ability to shoot quite well and also played better defense than I’d seen previously. The kid is also short, even for this team, something I haven’t mentioned before. His annoying traits were still present, though more restrained tonight. In our later drills he would once again prove quite the adept shooter.
Cameron once again did nothing poorly, but neither nothing outstandingly well. This would be the theme with his running as well, which was our next part.
Using two groups I had them do a variety of drills which required them to run/dribble to half court, and back. Miles actually showed a surprising amount of speed, but his control was poor and his left hand weak, so no loss there. After doing the running, I immediately put them back in their three groups and had them each shoot three free throws. Cameron actually did fairly well here.
Then it was time for “half court suicides”. A suicide, for those who don’t know, is where a player runs from under the basket, to the free throw line, back to under the basket, to half court, back, to the opposite side free throw line, back, and to other the other basket and back. The drill is grueling, but is a staple of basketball training because it is good conditioning and also gives players a chance to work on change of directions, again an important skill. Anyhow, a half court versions are considerably less difficult. Of course they ended up running 4 variations which again was somewhat tiring. They did have a short break in between runs as we had two groups, but the players did tire. Then it was another three free throws. The shooting percentage, not surprisingly, dropped off for the second three. I then gave them a water break.
One important note: Dante clearly was not hustling during this. I got on him and still he did not hustle. Later I would learn there was a reasonable explanation for this.
We next did a drill where there is a player who passes in to someone who posts up. That player is being guarded. I only allowed the poster, as I called him, to take one shot. I also stated that there could be no fade aways. It was interesting seeing who turned inside, and who turned outside. The first 5 kids, meaning nearly half, turned outside, until Miles turned inside and became only the second player to actually make the basket. We ran through this twice.
Finally, we ended by doing left handed lay-ups, dribble from the right side to take a shot from about 12 feet on the left side, right handed lay-ups, and doing the jump shot with dribble from left to right.
I gathered everyone around, thanked them for another great day of try outs and explained how the team would be posted. I was asked what days practices were and I said they were currently scheduled on Mondays and Wednesdays. Dante groaned. Turns out he plays travel soccer year round and those are the days they practice and there was even some overlap in the time. This was bad news, as Dante was making the team no doubt. It means I need to talk to Emily, my Park District contact, about changing that Wednesday practice, as Mondays are the best day of the week for me scheduling wise.
Anyhow, I went home. Immediately, of the six I crossed off Miles, Matt, Nick, and David R. Tom and Lucas made the cut. That leaves me with 9 players and only Cameron and Gordie left to make a decision about. Of the two, Gordie is more talented, no doubt. But the question is: is he coachable? Then there is Cameron. His skills aren’t as present, but I know he’ll work hard. Of course he doesn’t bring anything to the team dynamic and while not being a minus is good, being a nothing, is well, nothing. And Gordie at least will have moments where he’d likely add something good.
I think in the end I’m going to take Gordie and not Cameron, though I could take both if I wanted since 11 is still manageable and gives a little more breathing room for sickness/injury. Of course, if everyone is there it makes for an incredibly awkward number to practice with. So that remains the last decision to make. I will likely make it by the time I wake up tomorrow. And truth be told it’ll likely be Gordie and not Cameron. But time will tell.
Yesterday we did a few drills. We started with a 3 on 2, 2 on 1 weave drill. Then we went to zig-zag dribbling. They were always to use the hand they were dribbling towards, so left if going left, and right if going right. I was actually very impressed overall with how well many of these kids were able to dribble with both of their hands. However, I decided, upon further reflection, that the width we were doing was too small. We ended up repeating this today first thing so that we could use the full court before the 5th graders arrived. I was able to see a lot more distinctions when we did it tonight.
We also did several passing drills with two man teams doing a slide with chest and overhead passes, along with a jogging bounce pass back and forth. We also did a 45 second, how many 6-9 foot jump shots can you make. We ended with some 3 on 3 games. The 3 on 3 games? Disaster. I learned very little worthwhile. I feel like we did something else, but it is forgotten at this point.
Coming out of day 2 a huge burden was taken off my shoulders. All three of the H triplets were going to make the team. Brian, our friend with the broken ankle, is a fairly good guard. I really don’t like his attitude, but it is not so bad as to be a major problem. Scott seems like he’s going to be a good forward. I still have no clue where I’m going to play David, who was once again the best player on the court. I mean he’s likely the best ball handler we have, but he’s also one of the taller players, on a team that is fairly short. Anyhow, this is the sort of problem that I like to have, and I have a bit to figure things out.
Also showing real promise was Dante. He’s one of the two tallest kids out there, besides Asher (who was the kid who reminded me of me in 4th grade). Dante showed good to very good abilities to dribble, shoot, and rebound. He’s exactly the sort of center I had hoped to have: A threat (as much as any of them are) from the outside and able to handle the ball. Fits into the motion offense I expected to run.
Let me diverge from the tryouts here for a second. I went into tryouts with an open mind. I haven’t really choreographed what I expected the offense or defense to be because I wanted to see their skills first. But, as I knew the community, they were what I expected. Mostly a group of short kids. Their dribbling skills were better than I expected and their shooting about what I thought it would be. Anyhow, my plan is to spread the floor, as even tall 4th graders don’t tend to be huge, and teach them how to move without the ball in order to create inside shots. Most of these kids cannot shoot, really, beyond 12, and for many 10 foot is the outer range of where they should be shooting.
Anyhow, so Dante makes the team. Leaving the gym that night I knew that we had a team of 5:
The Hs, Dante, and Jack P. Jack P is another taller kid with good dribbling and shooting skills. He’s a step below Dante in height, and could see some limited time at Center, but will more likely be seeing time in the 3 and 4 spots.
I went home and entered the numbers for both the objective and subjective drills. Came up with a weighted and un-weighted formula to rank them with. Based on that analysis I got two more players; both surprised me at the time as they had not really made an impression, but based on observations tonight both definitely deserved it. Noah was one of them. A shooting/point guard, even possibly a small forward, he’s got a great first step for a penetrating dribble and is a very accurate lay-up shooter. The other player to make it was Jack M. Interestingly, I had a fairly hard time telling Noah and Jack apart for a bit as they both have about the same skin tone and have the same hair cut. I do think I have it down now, though. Anyhow, Jack did very well defensively and showed good ability to dribble with both hands. He’ll be a point/shooting guard for us.
That gave me 7 players who I knew would make the team. I also had ruled out two. Asher was one of them. He actually turned out to be a great rebounder, but really all the other parts of his game are just terrible. My decision was reaffirmed when I learned before tryouts tonight that he’s actually had extensive basketball training. Hence the reason why he had surprised me by knowing of the “hot shots” drill. For a kid who has had all the background he’s had, his fundamentals are just appalling. I thought he was a kid who might just need a thousand lay-ups so he could not look like an octopus when he shoots. But that likely is wrong. He just doesn’t have it. Oh well. Asher also drove me nuts since he took every opportunity he could to sit down. I asked him if he was tired, and he said no. I let him know that he shouldn’t sit down then. Anyhow Asher was out.
Also out was Matt. Matt was one of only two kids, along with Miles not to attend day 2. Matt was slow and unskilled. No real getting around it. I actually wondered if he’d even show up today. He did and my limited observations only more than confirmed what I thought.
That left 7 kids who I was undecided about:
Miles
Tom
Nick
Cameron
David R
Lucas
Gordie
Tom was a virtual lock to make the team. The real problem was that he was a noticeable step below some other kids at some important skills for both the 1 and 2 positions, which were the spots he seemed most comfortable at. He did have good hustle and a good sense of how to move on the court. Considering the offense I want to run this latter trait was what made him a virtual lock to make the team. In fact were it not for his thoroughly mediocre shooting scores I’d like have already put him on the team.
Nick was nearly put on the cut list, but I decided to leave him off. However, he did not come tonight and as such his performance did not improve, making him an easy cut. He did have fairly good defensive skills, though not substantially better than several other players. This means this postive was more than negated by his terrible offensive skills. He wasn’t a particularly great hustler either. He also sucked his shirts. I know this last thing might seem inconsequential but it was actually a fairly big minus in my book. I want my players to play fearlessly out there. That was one way I made basketball teams, because I was (and am) fearless on the court. I’m not afraid to take a charge or set a hard pick or dive for the loose ball. Anyhow, I want fearless players and a kid who sucks his shirt at age 9 is not a fearless kid..
Then there is Cameron. Cameron is a blob. He doesn’t do anything great, but he doesn’t do anything poorly either. More about Cameron later.
David R was the kid who yesterday I just loved his attitude. I continued to love his attitude. I went into tonight looking for something, anything, to justify putting him on the team.
Lucas, was a kid who I didn’t have much of a sense for. His weighted scores, which gave more weight to the objective things we’d done, were so-so.
Finally there was Gordie. Gordie showed moments of skill. However, I knew heading into the day that he’d be a borderline player, with me not wanting to take him. The reason for this was that he was CONSTANTLY not paying attention or needing me to call him over or asking him not to shoot a basket while some other kid was doing his shooting drill. Before tryouts started today the 5th/6th grade coach asked me about him. I told him that he was borderline leaning towards no. The coach explained that he knew the family well and had coached his brother on a couple of teams, and that the brother had the same personality. Good to know it runs in the family.
Miles had not impressed me during the first night’s tryout. However, he was the kid who I first met who had a good spirit. I thought that perhaps there was more that he was capable of, that I simply hadn’t seen. Before tryouts tonight I met his father. His father has an unbelievable background, having founded the 4th grade travel team, done all sorts of JCC sports, founded, and is currently president of, a small fry team. I really liked the guy. It gave me renewed hope that Miles would have more to show me.
Several players had told me they’d be a minute or two late. So when the opportunity arose with 4 of us there to play a game of knockout, I took it. I won. We then played two more games, with more kids joining in each time, which I also won. I’m sure it’ll be a big relief to you to know that I could beat a bunch of 9 year olds. The players all really enjoyed it though, which was good. I let the kids play a fourth game, which only got about ¾ finished before we started tryouts.
As I mentioned we started with full court zig-zag dribbling. After doing full court once we did to half court and back as the 5th graders were starting to trickle in. Next we played a game of “Man in the Middle”. The kids were about 10 feet apart. Person in the middle. The two people on the outside could throw chest or bounce passes to their partner while the man in the middle tried to intercept. This did not turn out nearly as well I had hoped and I ended up speeding it up, though I did get to see a couple of kids do the sort of passes I wanted to see.
My goal tonight was to focus on 6 kids who I didn’t know about. By the end of man in the middle, and based on seeing him play lightening, I knew that Miles, bless his heart, just didn’t have what it took and neither did David R. I really liked both kids, but a travel basketball team just is not the right place for them right now. In happier news, Lucas had impressed me during knockout and continued to impress me during the first few drills and moved into the likely make it category.
Next we divided into 3 teams of 4, as there were only 12 players there. Besides Nick, the H triplets were not there (which was not unexpected). I tried to put 1 center person (which ended up being Asher, Dante, and Lucas), 1 forward (Jack M, Tom, as if he could play forward his playing time would be greatly increased, and Cameron), and 2 guards. I also tried to roughly balance the teams talent wise. I also told the kids who to match up against, though I did not state what position I’d put them at.
The scrimmage proved to be quite informative, in the confirm what I already know sense. Asher, for instance, not only can’t shoot but LOVES to shoot. To the great annoyance of his team mates. Noah impressed me with his ability to penetrate. Lucas tried to play guard until I told him “if you make the team you will be at forward or center, so play there”. He didn’t like it but gave the position his best, which was nice to see. He did a nice enough job. It became clear that Tom could not play forward. That’s a shame as it greatly reduces his utility since I have enough guards, even if I use the 3 as a semi-guard, as is likely. He did, however, again show his ability to move around without the ball to great effect.
More frustrating was Gordie who proved an ability to shoot quite well and also played better defense than I’d seen previously. The kid is also short, even for this team, something I haven’t mentioned before. His annoying traits were still present, though more restrained tonight. In our later drills he would once again prove quite the adept shooter.
Cameron once again did nothing poorly, but neither nothing outstandingly well. This would be the theme with his running as well, which was our next part.
Using two groups I had them do a variety of drills which required them to run/dribble to half court, and back. Miles actually showed a surprising amount of speed, but his control was poor and his left hand weak, so no loss there. After doing the running, I immediately put them back in their three groups and had them each shoot three free throws. Cameron actually did fairly well here.
Then it was time for “half court suicides”. A suicide, for those who don’t know, is where a player runs from under the basket, to the free throw line, back to under the basket, to half court, back, to the opposite side free throw line, back, and to other the other basket and back. The drill is grueling, but is a staple of basketball training because it is good conditioning and also gives players a chance to work on change of directions, again an important skill. Anyhow, a half court versions are considerably less difficult. Of course they ended up running 4 variations which again was somewhat tiring. They did have a short break in between runs as we had two groups, but the players did tire. Then it was another three free throws. The shooting percentage, not surprisingly, dropped off for the second three. I then gave them a water break.
One important note: Dante clearly was not hustling during this. I got on him and still he did not hustle. Later I would learn there was a reasonable explanation for this.
We next did a drill where there is a player who passes in to someone who posts up. That player is being guarded. I only allowed the poster, as I called him, to take one shot. I also stated that there could be no fade aways. It was interesting seeing who turned inside, and who turned outside. The first 5 kids, meaning nearly half, turned outside, until Miles turned inside and became only the second player to actually make the basket. We ran through this twice.
Finally, we ended by doing left handed lay-ups, dribble from the right side to take a shot from about 12 feet on the left side, right handed lay-ups, and doing the jump shot with dribble from left to right.
I gathered everyone around, thanked them for another great day of try outs and explained how the team would be posted. I was asked what days practices were and I said they were currently scheduled on Mondays and Wednesdays. Dante groaned. Turns out he plays travel soccer year round and those are the days they practice and there was even some overlap in the time. This was bad news, as Dante was making the team no doubt. It means I need to talk to Emily, my Park District contact, about changing that Wednesday practice, as Mondays are the best day of the week for me scheduling wise.
Anyhow, I went home. Immediately, of the six I crossed off Miles, Matt, Nick, and David R. Tom and Lucas made the cut. That leaves me with 9 players and only Cameron and Gordie left to make a decision about. Of the two, Gordie is more talented, no doubt. But the question is: is he coachable? Then there is Cameron. His skills aren’t as present, but I know he’ll work hard. Of course he doesn’t bring anything to the team dynamic and while not being a minus is good, being a nothing, is well, nothing. And Gordie at least will have moments where he’d likely add something good.
I think in the end I’m going to take Gordie and not Cameron, though I could take both if I wanted since 11 is still manageable and gives a little more breathing room for sickness/injury. Of course, if everyone is there it makes for an incredibly awkward number to practice with. So that remains the last decision to make. I will likely make it by the time I wake up tomorrow. And truth be told it’ll likely be Gordie and not Cameron. But time will tell.
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