Tryouts Day 3

Well day 3 of tryouts is in the books and my decision has gotten harder. 7 o’clock rolls around and we have 8 players. Players were not exactly early to arrive so at first I was hoping for six, so we could do 3 on 3. Just what I was expecting and just fine with me. At 7:03, after they’ve shot around for a couple minutes, Sammy comes strolling in. 9 is even better than 8 with me, as we then have 3 teams for 3 on 3.

During the intro speech I ask the players to think of what their strength as basketball players is. I paused and then told them that hopefully they had showed me that nights 1 & 2, but if they hadn’t, now was the time to do it. I also explained that if a player was on the bubble, the tie breakers would be their attitude and their defense.

To back up that message about defense, we start off with defensive slides. Quintin, one of my bubble boys, isn’t there so I am focusing most of my attention on Leonardo and Jack. And Leonardo looks much better at this than does Jack. Overall their ability to do this drill is still limited. I still don’t get it. I should mention that we’re only practicing on half a court tonight because there are girl tryouts going on simultaneously.

After the slides we do animal rebounding. They are lined up randomly, and so they are placed into random groups. I put Sammy in the second group and task the players with explaining to him how it works. We played to 5, where there is less luck involved than a game to 3. But interestingly enough Michael, who had finished first in his group before, finished first again. So that bodes well for him. He did a particularly good job of managing to get a shot off inside even under pressure. I know from talking to his coach from last year that he sees himself as more of a perimeter sort of player and also a player who expects a lot of playing time. It seems like it might come down to the idea that if you want the playing time you should expect to be inside some of that time. In the first group Grant finished 2nd, Sammy 3rd, Seth 4th, and Jack 5th. This was Jack’s second last place finish, though to his credit he was in there mixing it up, he just couldn’t pull it off. In the second group it went Matthew, Austin, Mason, and Leonardo.

Next up was the triangle passing drill. With only 8 players there I decide to have them do the full rotation, so everyone plays defense twice, and each of the three offensive positions. One group does manage to get to 10 passes, so that’s good. Less good is that I can’t tell you who. Can’t do that, because the girls’ coach constantly had lines in front of where my camera was setup, so I have no footage from last night. Rather aggravating actually. It is during the triangle passing that Sammy starts to make a case for himself. It is also towards the end of this that Josh shows up. He was one of the football people, so I was definitely not expecting him.

After the triangle passing drill I have them run some relays, which I was not paying attention to, and thought I’d just pick up later on video. While these were going on I was making teams for 3 on 3. Before 3 on 3, I wanted to see some outside shooting, something we hadn’t done at all. I wanted to give them a lot of time for 3 on 3, so we played a game of “Golf”. The idea in golf is to make a jump shot from the elbow. If you miss you don’t want the ball to hit the floor. It’s a rebounding and shooting drill all in one.

We then spent the next 25 minutes doing 3 on 3. And this is where things got interesting. Leonardo made a strong case for himself with his defense. Sammy made a case for himself as well with some real aggressive defense, though doing so without getting beat due to his speed, and he made a surprising number of shots. I don’t exaggerate when I say he has no shooting form. So did he get real lucky? I dunno.

The group had gotten tired with 3 on 3, so we ended with a couple more games of Golf, to make sure I had a sense of their outside shooting, and then a game of lightening, which I ended half way.

I ended tryouts by thanking everyone, telling them how they had shown more and more each night of tryouts, and shaking their hands while thanking them for trying out. Here’s a recap of the players:

Yes
In rough order from who I see as most talented to least:

Alex: He’s going to be our center. Much of the offense ran through him last year and I anticipate something similar this year. Due to his inside strength, and our general lack elsewhere, I think we’ll run a 4 out 1 in offense.

Josh: Despite being short, he’s tough. He’ll be our starting point guard. In fact at the moment he’s the only kid who I trust to both pass and dribble. Now the bad news is that he choked, repeatedly, while shooting layups in 3 on 3. He must have missed 6 or 7 over the course of the time. At the 5B level that’s a lot of baskets to give up.

Michael: I don’t have a good handle on his personality yet. This is a kid who, while my back was turned, both shot at a basket while waiting for a drill (definite no-no), but also sprinted when I asked him to go do something, again with my back turned. He definitely had some negative words for his fellow teammates. So I think there is the potential to be a leader there, but he’s far away from it right now. Good news is that he can do all the big things, shoot, dribble, defend, rebound, fairly well making him a nice overall package. As I indicated he’s a possible 4 player for us.

Seth: This kid has real potential. He’s the second tallest player on the team after Alex, but doesn’t have the fortitude to play big yet. Hopefully that can be developed. What I really like about him is his good attitude & his ability to have explosive speed with the ball. If he can improve his shot, he has the ability to take over a game, something that Josh and Alex have, but Michael lacks. Jon, last year’s coach, said he got much better as the season went on, hopefully there will be similar growth this year. As a starter he would probably play the 3 position, or small forward.

Austin: Here’s a kid who doesn’t have that ability to take over the game, but he’s not going to cost you a game either. If we were playing tomorrow he’d be our starting 2, which as I tend to coach is less a shooting guard and more a release valve. I tend to like my most athletic players at the 3 spot, where they can work both inside and out, or at point directing the offense.

Grant: If Michael can’t cut it as a 4, it would likely fall to Grant. The kid’s ball handling isn’t terrific, but he does have a terrific sense of humor and seems liked by his peers, which is always good for a team. He’s good at lay-ups, which is good for a 4. He made extreme efforts to thank me at all the tryouts, which was a nice show of respect, even if it was most likely parent urged.

Matthew: Probably our back-up point or 2 guard. Prone to mental mistakes at times, he can still be a solid ball handler. He wore a hat the first day of tryouts which didn’t even register with me until I saw the video. Frankly I find something about him off personality wise, and if there were more options I wouldn’t take him on that basis alone. However, this wasn’t a huge group trying out so I will take what I can get.

Mason: Before last night I’d have placed him much higher. He’s definitely the shortest player on the team. There were times tonight where another player just took the ball away from him. In this he reminds me of where Jack, a player on my GL teams for the past two years ago, was when in 4th grade. By the time he was done in 5th grade he’d learned how to avoid giving up the ball purely because someone was bigger and stronger. Mason has a good deal of basketball IQ and can see the court well. I would prefer for him to be our backup point guard, so hopefully he start to figure out strategies, with some coaching included, on how to not be taken advantage of.

Bubble Boys

Leonardo: He’s willing to take risks on defense to get that big score. That can be quite problematic as it leaves us vulnerable. He has, however, probably the best court vision of anyone outside of Josh, and will frequently make that pass to make it happen. Jon mentioned that he grew a lot last year, as I don’t believe he’d ever played organized basketball at all before this. Before last night it was basically between him and Quintin, but he showed me enough during 3 on 3, to say I should take him. Particularly because I think he can play back-up center. He doesn’t have the height, but does have the bulk, and this helps free me to use Seth to better effect. He came through on defense, and I said I was looking carefully at that, so he has become a yes.

Jack: He was an almost for sure yes coming into night 3. However, I watched him closely and can’t see what he does well. That was the charge I gave at the start of the tryouts: think of what you do well and show it to me. He seems like a nice enough kid. But what role or purpose would he have on the team? I’m not all that enthused about a kid like Matthew either, but it’s clear that Matthew’s skills warrant being on the team. Not so with Jack.

Quintin: It was disappointing not to see Quintin there. Unlike with Jack, Quintin does have real strengths. Quintin has a good sense of the floor, on both offense and defense. He doesn’t have the footspeed to always do what he needs to on defense, but he knows how to be in help, for instance, something I didn’t see watching other kids. He’s not going to b e an attitude problem in anyway, and would likely be happy with whatever playing time he got. Someone like Jack might be a little more skilled than he is, which is why going into today Jack was the yes and Quintin the maybe. But Quintin has definite things he brings to the table, if not much of a perceived upside.

Sammy: I thought for sure he was going to cut himself and was not surprised when we got started and he wasn’t there. But he arrived late and gave a very good tryout. He uses his speed to excellent effect on defense. When we would press the ball, Sammy would be an absolute nightmare for the other team. Only problem is that once we got the ball, he becomes a nightmare for us. Even if his shot is better than his form suggests, and I’m not convinced that it is, his ball handling is atrocious and a liability in any type of fast break situation, like the kind created by his steals. He would be a project. Does he have the desire to improve and get better? I just don’t know. The upside that Quintin lacks, is here in spades, but Quintin is definitely the better basketball player at this moment. Would that still be true in February? I dunno.

So me and my big pen talk about how my decision has been easier than in years past. And if Sammy doesn’t show up last night and perform the way that he did it is. I take Leonardo & Quintin, and cut Jack. Now though, I’m in a much stickier situation. I have until 4 today to make up my mind and I’m going to use all the time I have to sort it out, as who I think I should take changes by the hour.

Tryouts Day 2

Day 2 of tryouts is in the books. Sammy and Brandon, the two likely cuts from yesterday, weren’t there, leaving us with 11 players. We started off with dribble suicides, which didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. I have a pretty good feel for who can dribble, Josh foremost among them, and who can’t, pretty much everyone else. After this we did Animal Rebounding, my absolute favorite drill. It’s my favorite because it teaches aggression, it teaches rebounding, it teaches how to get a shot off with three guys in your face. In Animal Rebounding you want points. You get a point every time you get a rebound, make a shot, steal the ball, block a shot, or cause two jump balls. Normally we play to 5, but to expedite things during tryouts we played to three. At three there is some definite luck involved, but upon watching the video the winners of our three groups, Josh, Seth, and Michael, were all worthy winners. We’re going to do this again tonight, and due to a football game I’m only expecting 8 or so, and we’ll play up to 5. Between the two games, I should have a good feel for their abilities in this game. I was encouraged that I heard a couple of players say they felt the game was fun. That’s a good thing.

After Animal Rebounding we did full court lay-ups. Basically everyone got the same range of scores, of 5-7, making it worthless. We did it for 45 seconds and it tells me that 45 seconds just isn’t long enough it seems to get a range. Though the drill was useful, since when I watched it on video I was able to get a sense of the kids’ layup form, most of which was poor.

I’ve ragged a little on their fundamentals, which in some ways is unfair. They are a B-level team and B-level team are going to have problems with fundamentals. And while I intellectually know the importance of teaching good fundamentals, I haven’t done the greatest job in the world of actually doing so. I have some structure changes to my practices that I think will encourage them to be used better, but I still recognize this as an area where I can coach better.

After full court lay-ups we did a 3 man weave, which was our first passing sort of drill. This was where a few kids showed some good basketball IQ, or at least good previous instruction, as they knew some of the subtle things to do, like running wide, to do the drill well.

We then ended with some extended 5 on 5, with some no dribble 5 on 5 in the last few minutes. They did it without complaint and did it in many ways more effectively than my 5th grade team did it at the END of last year, so that was all good.

Basically I have a team at this point and a fairly good sense of their strengths and weaknesses. I know I said that I was going to go kid by kid, but I don’t think it would change much from where I’m at today, to tomorrow. So when the team is finalized I’ll start going over the players.

So I have 8 definite yeses. I have one almost definite yes, Kevin, who just rubs me the wrong way in some sense. Not sure why, but as I watched the video last night he went from a maybe to a yes. But something about him & Grant, who does well on all of the objective stuff we do and when I watch him does well subjectively, raise flags for me. And they’re both nice kids, or at least can appear so at tryouts, so it’s not an attitude thing.

That leaves basically 1 spot for two kids. The two kids on the bubble or Leonardo and Quintin. Right now I’m leaning pretty strongly towards Quintin. I watched everything these two did very carefully on video and they each have their strengths and weaknesses, but overall it seems like Quintin slightly outshines him. In particular I like two things about Quintin. One is he’s always trying to play defense. I’d say Leonardo has better defensive skills, but he’s also less likely to hustle back, and he’s more likely to leave his man to attempt to make a steal. The second is that Quintin seems to have a good sense of how to move on offense. He was always moving around doing something productive, whether it was a cut or a screen, or balancing the court. I would say the biggest plus for Leonardo is his passing. It would appear to be top 4 or 5 of the whole group. I haven’t done a lot of passing stuff, but this has seemed true from what we have done. Hopefully both will be there tonight so I can gain that much more information on them. But unlike in the past two years I don’t feel the same dilmena about the final players I’m going to choose.

Tryouts Day 1

Yesterday were the first day of tryouts. Going in, I decided that I pretty much liked my plan from last year and would be following something similar this year for Day 1. It was a little nerve racking since 2 minutes before tryouts were to begin we didn’t even have 10 players. Fortunately, 4th grade tryouts ran a little long and so we got a late start with 13 players. I will be taking 10 of the players.

The first thing I do is deliver my speech. I deliver the same speech as last year, with a few tweaks. I think it introduces things quite well.

Our first drill is dribbling. And right away it becomes clear that one kid, Sammy, is not just a BAD dribbler, but is nearly incapable of doing so. We do both left and right handed. And then for kicks we do two handed dribbling. Several kids really stood out. Unfortunately, I don’t quite have names and faces down yet, so I can’t say all of the kids who did well or struggled. I can tell you that, Josh, who was the point guard last year, did well with it. So did Alex, who is going to be the center. Austin, was able to mostly do it, and besides being a lefty, seems like a really fun kid. This year I will be videotaping all of the games and so filmed tryouts. Upon video review I also discovered that Mason hadn’t gone particularly fast, but was slow and steady and in accomplishing it. Having players who can play with-in themselves is always a tricky thing so that’s a definite plus for him.

Following 2 handed dribbling, we do 45 seconds of lay-ups. The best at the layups were Austin, Grant, Seth, and Quintin. Grant doesn’t have the athletic skills that I’ve had on previous teams, but it seems like he might have the basketball skills and personality to be a valuable member of the team. Quintin was one of the favorites of last year’s coach.

At this point, I’d already identified two kids who were likely cuts, which is making me feel pretty good and giving me a fair amount of time to spend thinking about what kind of team we could be, rather than just who has the skills, or not.

Following the layups, and a water break, we did two drills which caused a lot of confusion. The first was just 1 on 1 dribble zig-zag up the court. This is a standard drill, one I know last year’s coach did, and so it amazed me that so many had problems with it. On the other hand, triangle passing, was one I expected to cause more problems and it did. Due to the confusion with zig-zag, I was spening a lot of time remediating and so once again the video came in handy in seeing who could do what. Except that because I’m not super solid on who kids are yet, I couldn’t always tell from the video who was who. Definitely lessened its helpfulness there, but I think I have a way of correcting that for tonight.

After this we played some 3 on 3. One of the things I didn’t like was the fact that a Josh and Michael always called for the ball and acted as point guards for their teams. I’m sure this is a relic of last year’s coaching. While I don’t believe just anyone should dribble the ball up the court, I also think that waiting for one particular kid, especially off rebounds, is not the best idea. I understand why Jon, their coach last year did this, because there is some weak ball handling, but I think I’m going to try and do otherwise. We’ll see how it goes.

The standouts for 3 on 3 were Alex, who is a definite yes at this point, and Seth. Seth, in particular, used ball fakes to his advantage. Overall I was impressed with the help defense that was played.

We then ended with some hardcore running. I don’t normally run them to the extent that we did here, but it lets me see how they act when they’re tired. With only 2 or 3 hours of tryout time per kid, some short cuts are required.

Then it was time to go home where I reviewed the tape. Since I don’t have good impressions of all of the kids right now, I’m going to hold off with a kid by kid run down for the moment. I will say that my two probable cuts are Sammy and Brandon. Sammy was the fastest and most agile kid at practice. He also worked hard on defense. But at the moment he’s a HUGE liability with the basketball. If a kid is better off not with the basketball than with, they can be ok with the assets Sammy brings. But if a kid has the basketball and it’s going to end up with the other team through a missed shot or turnover, that’s no good. The other probable cut is Brandon. He’s a touch slower than most of the other kids, he didn’t shine in any of the drills, and like Sammy, was super confused by much of what we did. A general bad combination. The definite yeses at the moment are Alex, Seth, Josh, and Michael. Michael’s attitude is questionable and if there was more talent to be had, I’d look for a reason not to take him. However, even factoring in the attitude, I think he’s going to end up being one of the 10 best this year.

And that is my overall first impression. They are a definite B level team. Probably a .500 B level team. Basically they are this year what they were last year. Hopefully we’ll have a good season, learn lots of good stuff, and have fun.

Reader Response

Reader Coach R - NJ writes:

When you get down to the last 2 or 3 kids who will make the team, its all subjective. You cant predict whether the kids you select there will turn out to be lifelong basketball junkies or if they will become disinterested and go on to play other sports.

The players that you didnt select, including some of those who were definite no's could turn around and decide to play the game and become future hs stars.

In other words no matter what you do, you are going to make mistakes. You can just try to pick your team in the fairest possible manner so that you have a team that you can teach and train and coach which will be attentive and work and play together.

All very true. And it's why I wasn't regretting my decision about who to take, so much as feeling guilty about cutting Noah.

He goes on to ask:

One question - what is your aggressive rebounding drill?

I call it Animal Rebounding. You put 4 or 5 players underneath a basket. The goal is to get 5 points. You get a point by getting a rebound, scoring a basket, blocking a shot, or stealing the ball. You are only allowed a limited number of dribbles (except to bring the ball back into play from out of bounds). You're not allowed to kill another player, but fouls are not called. When a player gets 5 points they exit the drill. I run it so that the first player to exit does 3 push-ups, the second 5 push-ups, third 10, fourth 15, and fifth does 15 and a suicide. I start with like size groups but about half way through the season I mix it up more as that really helps the little guys get used to being banged around when they drive into the post. It was the second most popular drill we did last year.

Reader path12 writes:

Aren't you limited exactly to team size? If you don't think taking Jack was a bad move, who could you have let go in order to retrain Noah?

I feel for all the kids who get cut. That happened to me a couple times and it sucked.

I took 11 kids. I could have taken 12 without any problems. The problem comes in playing time. So yes I'm limited in team size, but the decision for 11 was my restriction, not an external one.

And yes the whole getting cut thing sucks. That was me for every time I tried out from 4th grade to 7th grade. And for the most part I don't feel bad about it. Last year's decision between Gordie and Cameron, which considering how Cameron came out at this years tryouts might have been the wrong one, isn't one I regret. I also don't regret cutting Miles, who I think is an unbelievable kid who loves basketball, or Kevin, who made a real case for himself as a post player.

But Noah, yeah I'm having trouble with Noah. I feel like all he did was do everything I asked of him. I keep feeling like he upheld his part of the bargain: He listened to what I had to say, he attempted to do what I suggest, and it worked so he listened to more of what I said, he showed he loved the game (by playing it all summer long), and my part was to give recognition to that. Don't forgot it wasn't a case like with Miles where the attitude was all there but the athleticism, and to a lesser extent, basketball talent wasn't. Noah wasn't the most athletic kid, but he had basketball talent. The kid might drive me nuts at practice, but that doesn't mean he didn't want to learn, it just means he drove me nuts. That's my problem not his. So once I imputed a flaw on his attitude, something that is true with Jack M, than it became about talent and athleticism, where Jack M had him beat. But the accounting I gave him there wasn't fair. He has far more positives there than negatives and there is a reason that people both online and in person were telling me that. I regret it because I like to live up to my word, Noah thinks that I do live up to my word, and so he's not, I'm guessing, going to be mad at me for being cut, but instead say he wasn't good enough. But based on the criteria I laid out, he probably was.

GL Tryouts Night 3: We Have a Team

Well it was the night to really see who had what. As I started tryouts, promptly at 8:15, all were there except Dante. We immediately kicked off into our 5 on 5 games. First with the fair teams. Andrew showed that he indeed deserved to make the team, as did Cameron. Jon also felt strongly positive about Dante. Tom, by virtue of his have shown up, made the team. Even better is that during one of the second set of games, Tom actually took a shot. He air balled it, but I was just so happy he actually shot the ball, as he’d become loath to do that by the end of last season.

The initial 5 on 5 was nice, but far more instructive were the uneven 5 on 5 teams. The second team made up of Brian, Cameron, Dante, Jack P, and Tom showed that they could run, at least for a bit, with a team of Andrew, David, Justin, Lucas, and Scott. At one point during the game Justin got the ball at the 3 point line, Dante was sticking back giving him space (as he’d been told to do last season by me). Justin decided to take the shot. It was gorgeous and a perfect swoosh. There were murmurs of approval. There was then a great moment (at least from my perspective) when I said, “We don’t settle for that shot after 1 pass”. The murmurs went away.

More interesting was the way Team 3 played. This had 3 players on the very close bubble: Jack M, Jake, and Noah. Noah and Jack M stood out above the others. In fact perhaps the sweetest play of the night was a pass Jack made to Noah cutting through the lane which resulted in Noah making an easy lay-up. Basically those two were competing for the last slot. Each team plays two games, with it being 1st vs 2nd, 3rd vs 4th followed by 2nd vs 4th and 1st vs 3rd.

I then sent them off for a water break and conferred with Jon. He reiterated his support for Cameron and Dante, which I both agreed with. Cameron in particular won me over with his speed on defense. I conferred with people online and with Jon in person and with all of them pushing Dante, and Dante doing much better than Jake, inside (though Jake is likely a better shooter) that suggestion was given and accepted. In the end Jon didn’t seem to have any feel for Jack, but felt that Noah would play well and admitted that he liked the family and that was likely coloring his view. I agreed Noah had a great family. However, by the end of the water break I felt that Jack was the better player and I had made the tough decision in my head.

I gathered everyone around and talked about how now was the time to be supportive of friends who didn’t make the team. How, if you made the team you needed to be committed otherwise you were stealing a place from someone else who could have been a good member of the team. I also reviewed what would happen. I would give them the note card, talk about the strengths and areas they could improve and they could either stay or go at that point.

When this was all said and done, Emily, my boss at the Park District, came into the gym upset with me for having done this. I didn’t back down, and raised the points that everyone found out equally, I told players they could walk outside the gym after they found if they wanted (and explicitly sat by the door, for just this purpose. Overall, I hope I did the right thing by these kids by giving some immediate feedback, but I don’t know. I do know I was respectful to and upbeat about every kid who didn’t make the team. Hopefully that means something, but having to confront ones peers, as they choose to do, couldn’t have been easy. It won’t be an option again for the future, which in some ways is nice, as it takes my unease out of the equation.

Notable Cuts
Kevin – My first cut. He took it really well and set the precedent of staying in the gym. I wished he had gone out and not been able to handle, seemingly, the news so well.

Noah – He could barely hold it together when I told him that he hadn’t made the team. I told him I really did think he had improved tremendously and if he kept working hard and improving that he’d stand a real good chance for next year. I specifically suggested that he play a bunch with his brother so he can play against someone bigger and work on that. I really like Noah, despite my aggravation over his lack of focus at practice. If the final decision had been between Noah and someone who hadn’t been on the team last year, I’d have given the nod to Noah. I really hope he works hard this coming year.

Daniel – This kid did something which surprised me each night at tryouts. He kept hanging on barely and was a surprisingly tough cut. I think in most years he’d have made a GL team. A real nice kid.

Godie – The other player from last year besides Noah to get cut. I think he knew it was coming. Wasn’t a whole lot to it. He’d really have to work hard and improve a bunch just catch up to where players were this year, let alone where they’ll be in a year.

Meet the Team
So while I still feel upset and confused about the cuts, I feel an equal amount of excitement over this year’s team. I think this team is better than HP’s 6B team, and in fact I am going to try and arrange a scrimmage early on just to prove that very point. I think we are, top to bottom, a better team than last year.

Me - Hopefully I’ll be able to be a good enough coach for the talent assembled. My friend Jeff asked me if the key to being a good team was coaching throughout the season or picking the right players at the start. I said I didn’t know. If it’s the latter I think I did a good job. If it’s the former, only time will tell. I will say that I am in a much better place professionally and given my recent success at work, and coaching last year’s basketball and baseball teams I don’t lack for confidence right now. At the same time I worked REALLY hard on preparing for tryouts which I’m pleased about. Confidence and hard work are good things, I would hope, to be in a coach.

Andrew – As I mentioned I started with Kevin, which was done semi randomly, and then went down the list alphabetically telling each player. For some reason, on impulse, when I got to Andrew I asked him what he saw as his strengths and weaknesses. He identified something which I don’t remember and shooting as his strengths. He identified rebounding as a weakness. I think I perhaps did this to get a sense of his personality as he was pretty quiet overall. Anyhow, after I did this and told him he’d made the team (I immediately told all the people who didn’t make it, as I just felt that was right) he let out the biggest sigh of relief. I’ll be interested to see how he fits into the team dynamic but I think I’m going to like him.

Brian – I haven’t really talked much about him, other than that he was a given. He’s a great shooter. His ball handling skills aren’t as great as I would like and he does make passes which get intercepted. The biggest deal is that he had a rough bout of injuries a year ago. Coming into last year’s tryouts he had just gotten a cast off after 4 weeks after breaking his ankle at camp. A week after practices started he broke his other ankle. I don’t think he’d full recovered by March. However, at this years tryouts he was quick, as he was at least years tryouts. Hopefully he’ll stay injury free this season. He is a rather large hot head and can really go off on himself, and others, though more often on himself (or at me because of himself). So there’s that whole side. But he’s also a kid who, if he likes them, will go out of his way for others. I wasn’t surprised he would talk up another player after Night 1, not to tell me how to do my job, but because he was worried that the kid had had a bad tryout. He is just thoughtful, being the only player on the team, for instance, to ask me when my birthday was. On his note card, I had listed two areas for improvement. I told him the first was based completely on last year and that was playing team basketball and that he hadn’t done anything to the contrary during tryouts. Of course that was also true last year which is why I put it on the card anyway. I also talked with him on his tendency to try and play defense in a way that allows him to steal passes, at the risk of leaving his man open. When we did the triangle passing drill on Day 1, I noticed him doing this, just as he had last year. The nice thing about Brian is that I this year I start with a huge amount of built up trust with him. I know on multiple occasions he’s said, when I’m not around, that I’m awesome and his best coach ever. This has, and will, make dealing with him easier than it would have been otherwise.

Cameron – Before I talk about Cameron now, let me post what I said about him last year during tryouts

Cameron is a blob. He doesn’t do anything great, but he doesn’t do anything poorly either.

Well that’s certainly not true any longer. Cameron has tremendous speed. He is, I believe, after Jack P and David our fastest player. Jon pointed out that you can’t teach speed like that and I had to agree. When it was time for Cameron to come up, I told him how glad I was to have seen him on the first day of tryouts cause he was the last player I cut last year. I told him that he’d improved tremendously and congratulations on making the team. My impression is that he’s more of a me first player right now rather than a team player. I am hopeful, and optimistic, that the general team ethos we have will rub off on him.

Dante – First I should say that when I was debating about whether or not to take Dante, I wasn’t fair to him. Of the three areas I was evaluating (athleticism, basketball skill, and attitude) I focused entirely on his short coming, athletic ability, rather than on his tremendous strength of attitude. I’m real glad several people focused on that and pointed it out to me. I mean the kid practically hugged me when I told him he made the team. I commented to him how his post play had really improved and he said he’d gone to a camp for that. I’ll have to ask him what camp that was since it did him a lot of good as he was a bit of a weak player inside last season and I gave him the Dirk Nowitzki award to recognize the fact that he had a pretty good mid-range shot. I told him that the big thing this season was going to be his speed. I wasn’t worried about it on offense, but was concerned about it on defense. He took this area to work on the best of anyone in that you could tell he genuinely wanted to improve on it. I told him he’d have to work hard to earn his minutes and he seemed excited by the challenge.

David – David should be the best player on the team. David should be the best player on either team in many games. He’s fast, can use either hand to dribble penetrate. Guarding him in practice is always a pain. Best of all he’s not selfish in the least. He, more than me, deserves credit for the unselfish ball we played last year. With his example, my encouragement fell on receptive ears. I will say that this tryout format allowed me to do something that I’m not sure I could have ever done otherwise and that is for me to tell David honestly how much I respect not only his basketball ability but also how he works hard to be better. I had never told him that last year. I had done so in other ways, and I think he knew that I knew how special he was but I felt it was important for me to vocalize it to him. His areas for improvement was that he needed to show more often that he was having fun playing basketball and to not feel the weight of the team on his shoulders. I told him how he knows that I don’t run the offense through one person and that already I could see people who had stepped up after he quit starting to defer to him (Lucas and Scott were both guilty of this) and that it didn’t have to be that way, so he could relax and just do his best. Finally, I told him that I was going to ask a lot from his defensively. I said that I was going to have to ask him to guard big guys this year as we have a bunch of people who can guard guards but fewer who can guard inside guys. He nodded his head in understanding. As our talk ended I commented how I was glad he’d come out as I’d heard a rumor that he was trying out for the JCC team and he chuckled in a way that told me that was not a serious consideration. That made me feel good.

Jack M – In the end Jack made the team because he’s short but he knows how to compensate for that as much as possible and he sees the court well. He is also surprisingly good at penetrating going left or right which takes defenders by surprise. I was tough on Jack. I called him over and asked him why he deserved to make the team. He talked about his ball handling and passing. I agreed with both of those areas. I asked him why maybe he wouldn’t make the team. He couldn’t come up with anything. I gave him a moment to think and he still couldn’t come up with anything. So I told him that he was one of the 10 most skilled players out there, but that I was concerned about what things would be like for him this season. How I was concerned that being a gamer the losing would bother him. I told him how he’d really stepped up for us last year when David left the team, but that there is a lot more talent on the team this year and he’d have to earn every minute he played. By this time he was incredibly choked up. I then told him he had made the team. He kind of spit out “I thought I wasn’t going to.” As I’ll talk about when I get to Tom, I didn’t really weigh the three factors equally, but I am glad to know that as a coach, I have enough credibility in Jack’s eye that even though I told him he was one of the 10 most skilled players that I would leave him off the team because of the other factors. I ended with Jack saying that I really had confidence that he’s older and more mature now and so I have confidence that he could handle these issues. I then repeated myself, not for effect, but more out of nervousness. Conciseness would have been better in this situation so it was unfortunate that I didn’t deliver this last point more effectively.

Jack P – It is little known but September 19th besides being International Talk Like a Pirate Day is also “Give Jack a hard time at tryouts” or at least it was in GL. Unlike with Jack M, I told Jack P right off the bat that he’d made the team. I then told him that I’d considered not taking him after Night 2’s tryout. I then explained to him how it was ridiculous for me to even think about that. I told him how his speed and defense were too good to not have on the team, but that he was the lowest percentage shooter last season. And how missed shots drive me nuts. I will be explaining to everyone later how a missed shot is, in my eyes at least, the same as a turnover since we are giving up the ball every time we miss a shot. I told him that this season he was going to either have to improve his shooting percentage or we’d have to find other ways for him to contribute on offense. Jack just shook his head that he understood, but Jack is always a bit of sphinx when I talk seriously with him and so I’m not sure what was going on inside his head. I really wish if I knew it was “Coach is wrong and I’m going to show him” or “Coach is wrong and is an idiot” or “Ok I’ll have to do better” or “I’m awful”. I just don’t know. I do know that Jack was new to GL last school year and he had been a leader in Massachusetts so he’s got some good qualities there, even if he doesn’t yet have a firm place in the social structure here yet.

Justin – Poor Justin was the last kid to go. He actually talked some tonight and I think I’m going to really like him and will be a kid who I’m going to have to shield to some extent from his father. I told him how impressed I was with his shooting ability and that the 3 point shot he did was a beautiful shot. The admiration in my voice was clear. However, I also told him that he could ask people on the team about how I have sat people who have shot beautiful shots like that without working the ball. I also told him that I put on his note card as an area for improvement “It sometimes seems like you’re half a second behind what is happening” but that I wasn’t sure that was true at all. I said that I had detected something in his playing which bothered me but couldn’t place my finger on it yet but that we had a full season to figure it out. I also told him how I was real happy he came out for the team this year as I’d noticed how good he was when we played against him last year. Justin is going to be an incredible tool for us to have on offense. If he, Brian, and David can give us some credibility on the outside, causing other teams to guard us closely there, in particular Justin drawing out the big man, or forcing a team to go to zone, I think we can then use our speed to take advantage of them. The possibilities of Justin excite me.

Lucas – Lucas is a great kid. Where as last season I forced him to play post, he has grown more up than out and I’m not sure he’ll have the bulk to do that this season. I also know that we’re doing a much more sophisticated defense this year and that Lucas is going to struggle with that at first. Not a whole lot to say here as he was an easy pick as he just has a lot of good qualities, but nothing as outstanding (or negative) as some of the others. I had a real hard time, in fact, coming up with an area to work on and ended up putting “Being more of a leader on the floor” as he’s a real quiet kid but one everyone likes. He was, based on his name, the first kid to make the team. I’ll also point out that his father just LOVES me and his mother likes me a lot too. It’s nice having a couple of parents so firmly in your corner.

Scott – Scott told me he played guard a whole bunch at camp over the summer and kind of enjoyed it. I’m sure he did. I’m glad he’s willing to do that. I hope he’s still a scrappy kid as we need kids who can guard big kids. Sadly, like Lucas, he’s grown more up than out, and I don’t know if he’s big enough to play the post anymore. I hope he is though since he’s a tough defender, probably the best on the team after David. The neat thing about Scott right now is that he really doesn’t know just how good he is which makes him so absolutely enjoyable to coach since he’s got so much potential but works so hard.

Tom – Noah was probably a better basketball player during tryouts than Tom. However as I’ve said from the beginning Tom could make the team on attitude alone as long as he showed me SOMETHING. When talking about how I was looking for athleticism, basketball skills, and attitude, I talked extensively about attitude and didn’t really explain athleticism. Yet, when compiling the team I only really considered attitude as a secondary factor. It was ALMOST enough to keep Cameron and Jack off the team but in the end their talent won out. Noah was a mixed picture but overall positive in the attitude category and he didn’t make the team in favor of athleticism and skills. I’d like to think if we didn’t have so much talent I would follow my own dictum better, and in fact advocated that very position to Jon during his 4th grade tryouts for a couple of players. I don’t like it when my rhetoric and actions don’t match up so I will have to really rethink about this in the future, but for now it is simply a disappointment with myself. I think I would be less disappointed with myself if I’d considered this more in the case of Dante. I did think about it in Lucas’s case but he was a nearly automatic player so that doesn’t really count for anything. All that is a long way of saying, I think the world of Tom and he is the only evidence of my not having been completely hallow in what I said. I was quite concerned, as he’s a bit of a perfectionist, that he’d cut himself after he had a poor showing on Day 1. When I talked with Tom, I told him that while his shooting accuracy might not be there he had beautiful form and we’d work on his shooting this season together.

So that’s the team. I really do think they’re more talented than HP’s 6B team and if that’s true we’ve got a real chance of being better than the .500 team I thought we’d be. That said, practices don’t start for a month so in the meantime we’ll be focusing on HP which is meeting weekly.

Tryouts Day 2

Tryouts
Before the tryouts began I called over each of my players individually from last year and sat down with them. I told them that I was talking to everyone from the team
last year and this didn’t mean they were going to make, or not make the team. I told them how we were going to move up to A. Could they handle losing more than last year? I also said that we’ll be having some new kids on the team. Could they handle a new role? Obviously all the kids were going to say yes to both of these points, However, it was a pointed I wanted to start making early, as while it won’t sink in yet, I’ve planted the seeds to hopefully prevent a possible problem later on.

I started off by having them recap the highlights of what I was looking for. Not surprisingly they did a great job. I then also talked a little more about how tonight will be working, in terms of calling over each player individually and telling them whether or not they made the team. Then we got started.

I started off with them first running a full suicide and then a half suicide. This gave me some good information about their speed, something I hadn’t paid attention to yesterday. Next I gave them 45 seconds to get in order by height. Much to my surprise they did it in 30 seconds. I thought for sure that this would give me an opportunity to make them run again, instead I lavished praise on them for their accomplishment. We then did Animal Rebounding, basically with groups by height, though I did cheat some (for instance I had Scott go with the tall group, instead of David). Overall, as I expected, my players from last year did better than others, as they were more used to the physical nature of the drill. After the big guys took too long to go to 5 points I cut it down to 3 and it moved much more quickly. Following this we did a 3 man weave down, 2 on 1 back, which went better than I expected, though I very dumbly wasn’t making notes as it was going on so I can’t give specifics about it. I really regret that. After that it was time for some 3 on 3, followed by full court lay-ups to end the night. In the full court layups instead of a minute I gave them 45 seconds and with the exception of Rodrigo (1), Kevin (5), and Colin (5), everyone got 6 or 7, about the same as they got last night in a minute. The bad part is that overall things went really well. In my end of practice speech I told them how genuinely impressed I was and how some of them are going to just have bad luck, in that they were born in a year with a lot of talent. I went home in a real funk because of how tough I knew my job was going to be.

The Players
Here’s where we’re at with the players. I am not really going to comment, for the most part, on guys who have made the team, preferring to save that for my “Meet the Team” post that’ll come later. Players are classified as on my try-out sheet tonight as either black (made the team), green (almost for sure made the team), yellow (on the fence), and red (cut).

Cameron – Cameron showed he had the skills, but not the decision making. He passed up shots he shouldn’t have passed up and took shots he shouldn’t have taken. He showed that his skills deserve to be on the team, we’ll see if his attitude follows. He’d be a green, if not black, except for my concerns there, instead he’s a yellow.

Tom – Was not present last night. I really hope that he’s there tonight as he’s a green. I do know he was frustrated with himself (as so often happens) after the first night. My fear is that he cut himself when both Jon (for his talent) and I (for his heart) had marked him as likely pick-ups. I almost called him to check that he was coming back (as he and Gordie were the only two to show up Night 1 but not Night 2), but we’ll see. I really hope he didn’t cut himself. Green

Scott – Black

Brian – Black

Jack P – Black

Rodrigo – Slowest kid out there, with no real discernable skills. Red.

David – Black

Jack M – Ahh Jack M. Jack M is probably the 7th or 8th best player there. However, the chemistry issue is what is holding him back. While he could certainly earn a higher place, he’s likely to have a greatly diminished role this coming year. Not to mention we’re going to lose more. Both of these things are going to be hard on him. Evidentially, Jack has a football game tonight and Jack’s mom wants him to go to that, while Jack (sensing that he’s on the border) wants to be at the tryout. I frankly hope he’s not there so I can have some extra time to think about him.

Andrew – He was a for sure yesterday. However, he did not do well in the 3 on 3 or in Animal Rebounding. He’s still a green, but I have concerns about him being a tryout kid rather than a gamer.

Daniel – Daniel, by many accounts, should be cut. Except he’s a great kid. Oh and he finished first in his (short) group for animal rebounding. That counts for something. Just barely a yellow.

Matthew – His dad and I talked a little before practice. The kid loves basketball. Except he’s short. Matthew commented to me how frustrating it was that players were taller than he was. I remarked back that we’re going to be a short team compared to others. Red.

Justin – Black

Jake – He’s weak inside. He’d be a post player if he made the team, so that’s a huge negative. That said he’s got pretty good ball handling skills and speed given his size. He needs to show me he can play inside tonight.

Noah – My second heart breaking kid. Noah has improved so much since last March. I asked him, as tryouts were ending, if he’d practiced a lot during the off season. He said he’d played every day at camp. It showed. However, he’s not likely to be one of the top 10 players. He is very coachable, in that if you ask him to work on something he’ll work on it. Not to mention how grateful he is for every moment of playing time. Then there is the fact that tonight, during tryouts, he decided to try and climb up a wall. If he makes the team I know I will be spending a lot of practice time in management of him. There are quite a few pluses and minuses for him in both ways. The true definition of a yellow.

Dante – My third heart breaking kid. Dante is such a great kid, and, to my surprise, he finished second in Animal Rebounding. That said he is painfully slow, second slowest after Rodrigo. What I need from him most of all, is defense. We’re going to be playing some big kids and we’ll need to shut them down. If Dante can’t do that, his offense is less important. If he can do that, the fact that he’d be slowing us down on offense could be forgiven. In all likelihood he and Jake are competing against each other for a slot.

Miles – Speaking of speed, Miles seems to be faster with the basketball than without. He’s got a great sense of humor. I think if I were teaching his class, he’d be one of my favorite students. But he’s short and despite the desire and love of the game the skills aren’t there. Red.

Kevin – Kevin is a potential post player, except his ball handling and aggressiveness aren’t anywhere close to where they’d need to be to make the team. Red.

Colin – Colin is a big ole nothing. His skills aren’t poor but nor are they great. He’s very quiet so I have no sense of his personality even. Red.

Gordie – Gordie, along with Tom, was 1 of 2 not to be back for the second day of tryouts. I simply can’t imagine his skills are going to surpass others I’ve been looking at. Red.

Lucas – Lucas came in and played exactly the way I’d hoped he would. Black.

Tonight

So by my count there are 6 players on the team. I have basically resigned myself to taking 11, so we have 8 players competing for 5 spots. With this football game going on I am guessing that we’ll have fewer players tonight, which is nice because it will give me some flexibility on the players who aren’t there. Hopefully my Yellow players will be there to make the cases for themselves.

The plan for tonight is to do some 5 on 5 games. The teams, for the first gaeme, tentatively, are:

Team 1: Andrew, Jack M, Kevin, Rodrigo, Scott
Team 2 Brian, Jake, Lucas, Matthew, Noah
Team 3 Daniel, Gordie, Jack P, Justin, Miles
Team 4 Cameron, Colin, Dante, David, Tom

These teams should have a mixture of kids who are making it, not making it, and on the fence, with a variety of positions. The second game will be with teams made up of

Team 1 Andrew, David, Justin, Lucas, Scott
Team 2 Brian, Cameron, Dante, Jack P, Tom
Team 3 Colin, Daniel, Jack M, Jake, Noah
Team 4 Gordie, Kevin, Matthew, Miles, Rodrigo

These teams are not balanced, but instead giving me more of a chance to see how they interact with each other. The goal is to play 1 game with each of these teams for 5 minutes each game. That should take a tad over 20 minutes. I’ll then run, depending on what I need to see, either Animal Rebounding, or doing Full Court Jump shots.

And then it will be time for the 1 on 1 conferences. Last night after tryouts I stayed up late creating a notecard for each of the 20 kids. They will receive a notecard which looks like this (with better formatting)

Name
Thank you again for trying out. It is very hard to fully see a player in 2 or 3 hours but below I have given you an idea of what I saw as your strength(s) and as your area(s) for improvement. Whether or not you make the team I hope you work on your game this season and you choose to try out again in 6th grade.

Strength(s):



Area(s) for improvement:

I will bring each kid over, thank him for trying out, tell him if he’s made the team or not and hand him his notecard. I’ve pre-written out strengths and weaknesses for each kid, but am also prepared to revise, as necessary, tonight. While this is going on, I will have a game of continuous knockout going on in the other side of the gym. After the kid gets his notecard he’ll have the option of either rejoining the game or going outside to wait to be picked up. I have heard from someone who has done this before that a surprising amount of kids who get cut will want to stay. When I write next I should have a basketball team.

Tryouts Day 1

This is long. Sorry for the length, but a big reason I do this is to help me get my thoughts down and tonight I have a lot of thoughts.

Before the Tryouts Begin
The great thing about teaching is that when I’m doing it, I can’t think of anything else. I am completely absorbed in what I am doing. The bad thing is that I have a new position that has a lot more downtime. All day long was killing me. Anyhow, at lunch I check my e-mail and see one from Lucas’s dad. I anxiously open it up. He wanted to let me know that Lucas wouldn’t be there (Cubs game) but would be at the next two nights. I was so thankful for this as I had all the uncertainty over the triplets. I could just imagine showing up and seeing neither the triplets, nor Lucas (who with-out the triplets I would anticipate would become far more important for our offense).

Anyhow I was unable to concentrate after school ended so I left a mountain of work and came home to try and relax before practice. I waited as long as I could and then went to the gym, the 4th/6th grade coach, Jon, and I had agreed to help out each other during practice. I get there and there are a few 4th graders already there. And then who should show up but Tom. God bless him. I let him know he’s more than an hour early and so he goes away to practice some before hand. I then go in to help with the 4th grade tryouts. A little less than 15 minutes before the start of our tryouts I go out there to start writing down names, as I hate referring to someone as #3. Besides Tom and a kid named Rodrigo, there is a kid named Cameron who tried out last year. I was REALLY happy to seem Cameron as he nearly made the team last year (it was between Cameron and Gordie). With at least 1 anticipated opening I was glad to see him.

I went back in to the 4th grade practice for about 5 more minutes and then headed back out to registration as they were coming in fast and furious. I get out there and who do I see, but Scott and Brian? Despite my anxiety about them I was really happy to see them. And then, as if in a movie, Cameron moves and who should appear but David. I was blown away. And then it is just one kid coming after another. In the end we have 19 kids tryout. I was hoping to have closer to the 16 from last year. 19 just blew me away, especially as I know that at least one more player (Lucas) will be there tomorrow.

The tryout
As soon as the 4th grade is done I have our team go to the far side of the court so I can give my intro speech. As I explained, it’s about the only time they’ll see me read off a paper. I’m a very good extemporaneous speaker and so it takes a pretty special occasion for me to do more than just jot down talking points. However, I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything out and that I used carefully considered language in a couple of areas. Of course I go through the effort of writing down, and revising, my speech, even practice it 2 or 3 times, and I get there and realize I don’t talk about having fun so I’m forced while watching the 4th graders to add some on that. Here’s the speech I delivered:

Hi. My name is Coach and I’m going to be coaching the 5th grade team this year. I want to start by thanking everyone who came to tryout, but especially those who tried out last year and didn’t make it. I really respect those of you who did this as it’s not easy to try-out for a team, get cut, and still come back to try again. Let me say to everyone that coming into tonight I was so excited and nervous that I can only imagine how you feel.

That said, I’d encourage you to go out there have fun and do the best that you can. You only have two or three hours to show me your talent, so first impressions are important. Anything that you take home with you will be something that I don’t know about. For that reason don’t hold back.

I plan on taking 10, or possibly 11 players, but more likely 10. My goal is to put together the best possible team, for THIS YEAR. My guess is that this will include some of the same players from the team I coached last year and some players who I didn’t coach last year.

How will I decide who will make up the best possible team? I’ll be looking at your (use fingers) overall athletic ability, your basketball skills, and your attitude. Let me explain what I mean by attitude.

How hard are you willing to work? Whatever shape you’re in, are you willing to push it and try and get in better shape? I’ll notice people who keep digging deep when they’re tired and people who give up easily when they’re tired.

Do you know how to listen? We’ll be doing a bunch of different drills, some of which might be new. Its OK if you don't know a drill, but its not helpful to you if you do not pay attention to directions.

And are you willing to actually follow directions? I’d rather someone look a little awkward trying something new than repeat a bad habit that they’re comfortable with. For instance, we’ll be doing layups from both sides. If you use the hand you’re more comfortable with from the other side and make it, I’ll like that less than the player who misses but uses the correct hand on the correct side. If you’re not willing to try new things, all of the coaching in the world won’t make you better.

Finally, do you think basketball is fun? I love basketball; it’s why I coach. I hope to be able to coach a team who enjoys playing basketball.

With that said, let’s get started. I need X equal lines on the baseline.

Overall the tryouts went well. I had them do a couple of dribbling drills, with both hands, to warm up. We then did full-court layups, followed by 1 vs 1 dribbling. Next we did triangle passing. I then gave them the choice of a shooting drill or a rebounding drill and they voted for the shooting drill. We then concluded with some hard running, something I don’t really do during practices, as it’s a shortcut to see who can really dig deep.

To be honest the number of players through me as it was more than I was expecting, but not so many that I needed to go to the back-up plan I had, and would have gone to if we’d been closer to 25. Things took longer than expected, of course, and I didn’t get anywhere close to done with my plan, but that’s the way I like it.
I then gathered everyone in and told them that on Wednesday, if they’re at the tryout they’ll find out that night if they made the team or not. Otherwise they’ll have to wait for it to be posted. I also explained that each of them would get a card saying what they had done well and what they could improve on. I am planning on making clear tomorrow that they will find out privately if they made the team or not. The idea is to be humane, not to publicly humiliate a kid.

The Players
I’ll just say that with-in a few minutes of practice it became clear that not only were we going to be an A team, but we might be a better A team than I was expecting. Going in order on their tryout number.

Cameron – He’s clearly improved from last year, both absolutely and relative to his peers. Jon put him down as a yes. I see him as a maybe. We’ll have to see how he does in games.

Tom – I talked about how possibly there could be 11, though my plan was to take 10. If Tom’s not in the top 10 he’d be a reason to take 11. I think that highly of the kid. He was very unimpressive to me, but Jon has him as a yes, which is a relief.

Scott – One of the triplets. I think it’s possible he’s a better all around player than David at this point. In fact, in our two objective drills (full court layups and hot shots) he had the highest combined number of shots. He’s a definite yes.

Brian – Second of the triplets. Had the second highest total between our two objective drills. His defense looks better, which isn’t surprising as his ankles should both be fully healed from a bad run of luck he had last year. Definite yes.

Jack P – Jack P is in real danger of not making the team. His ball handling is excellent. However, his shooting continues to be abysmal. I should have NO problem finding ball handlers on the team, so he’s going to need to impress me with his defense tomorrow. Jon has him as a yes.

Rodrigo – This kid is big but uncoordinated. Seems like a real nice kid. My only definite No.

Brian H – Last of the triplets. Last year he was one of the two best players I saw play. Like so many early stars his peers are catching up to him. However, if he was 4th Grade Hall of Fame material last year, he’s at least All Star level this year. After tryouts I very privately talked to his mother. I said that I have at least 20 players trying out and it wouldn’t be fair to give him a slot if he can’t commit to the full season. She said she understood but that I really needed to talk to her ex-husband. Of the adults involved in the triplets lives (mother, step-mother, father, and two care takers) he is by far my least favorite. The jerk came to 3 games, including playoffs, last season, where as step mom was at 2/3. Dad and mom alternate weeks of custody so that means step mom was there weeks that she didn’t even have the kids at her house. Anyhow, I am going to have to call dad tomorrow. Definite yes.

Jack M – Jon didn’t have a yes or no for him. If he makes the team his role is going to be reduced. Last season he was missing for our first play-off game against a team we’d KILLED two time previously. As he was our main point guard besides David, we, not surprisingly, had offensive problems that day such that their coach thought we were going to lose our next game. If we’d had the same team that day we would have, but Jack was the difference. However, he’s short, and his peers have caught up to him in a lot of ways. He’d be a soft yes (like Tom) if not for one other factor: he’s very fragile emotionally. Losing was really rough on him. Even losing a drill in practice was rough on him. So more losing and a less featured role? Could be poison for chemistry.

Andrew – This kid appeared out of the woodwork, but I am hardly complaining. He told me before tryouts that he had a broken foot last year when it was time for tryouts. This kid looks to be a good, though not great, dribbler, passer, shooter, and on ball defender. Definite yes.

Daniel – I have no real sense of this kid. Jon has him as a definite no and his absolute scores aren’t very high but I have at least remember which kid he is before I make him a no.

Matthew – Tried out last year for me and then played on the B team for JCC, our arch rivals (more on them in a second). He was actually the worst scored player at last year’s tryouts. At our game against them I paid extra attention to him and felt that I had made the right decision cutting him. He’s definitely no longer the worst player on the court, but is still a likely no.

Justin – Justin’s being at tryouts alone would have equaled the karma balance of possibly losing David to JCC. JCC was a team which had a player as good, if not better, than David, this kid’s name was Luke. We played 3 epic games against their A team and 1 semi-epic game against their B team (where they actually brought Luke down just to give him a chance to beat us). Justin was on their B team. I heard he was from GL and was astounded that he was on their B team. He was a great player, he was able to dribble, pass, shoot, and rebound. I know his mother commented at our game on how much nicer I was than his coaches. And I was. Anyhow getting this player to tryout out for our team was something I had previously hoped for, but had recently, in my anxiety, forgotten. And I didn’t even mention the best part: he’s a center. Even playing up in the After the triplet’s he was the first kid who I marked down as a yes. Really funny? I’m waiting with the triplets for them to be picked up and Brian starts telling me how good Justin is and how maybe he didn’t show it tonight but that he’s really good inside. And I’m thinking, don’t worry, Brian. I’m salivating at the thought of having a true center. Definite yes.

Jake – I don’t remember this kid, but he had the best score of any kid on Hot Spot so I need to give him a second and third look. Jon also didn’t comment on this kid.

Noah – You could tell he had worked on his skills as he’d definitely gotten better since I saw him last spring. Jon marked him as a maybe and he’s a tentative yes for me.

Dante – I found Dante very uninspiring. Jon has him marked down as a yes and he’ll likely make the team because having a back-up center is good and he’s a great kid. But man is he slow. I mean he’d be the slowest kid I took.

Miles – Jon has him marked down as a no. I continue to like this kid, though not as much as last year. I was impressed with his defense so he’s got a somewhat neutral slate as far as I’m concerned.

Kevin – No comment from Jon or I. Can’t really remember anything he did, good or bad.

Colin – Another kid who I don’t remember much about. Jon has him as a no and I think I agree.

Gordie – Jon has him marked as a no. And I think I agree. But I feel like I owe it to him to give him a few more chances. I had prepared myself for this so while it makes me sad, at least I saw it coming.

Going Forward
We didn’t play any games tonight. My new practice plan for tomorrow looks like this:

Introduction Have players recap yesterday’s speech as a reminder/intro for players not there yesterday INDIVIDUALLY TELL FOR CUTS
Suicides
Full-court lay-ups
Animal Rebounding
Three Man Weave/2 on 1 back
Guts
3 on 3
5 on 5 no dribble
Thank yous INDIVIDUALLY TELL FOR CUTS

The idea is to spend most of the time on 3 on 3 and 5 on 5, ideally 40 of the 60 minutes, though I have a feeling it’ll be closer to 30-35. No Jon tomorrow so that changes some of what I will do. Wednesday will then be a lot of games, with the exception of a drill or two to see some skills for kids on the border. Between definite and probable yeses I have 7 players, Scott, Brian, David, Andrew, Justin, Tom, and Lucas so there are at least 13 kids fighting for the last 3 (maybe 4) spots. Wednesday will be brutal for me, but after today, which was better than the best case scenario I’d ever envisioned (getting the triplets plus Justin), I’m fine with it, especially as I know it’s the right thing to do for the players, and that counts more than how I feel.

Sunday’s tryouts were a little better in that I figured out some stuff to do, rather than sitting around doing nothing. I also wisely (I thought) wrote down the names and numbers of the players to start to get a grasp of who was who. It was funny, the guy who coached the 4th grade team last year that I knew named just about every player there and said “you won’t be having him”. I disagreed. I also felt validated as there was one short kid who I had pegged yesterday as a potential starting point guard for me. At Sunday’s tryouts he played really well. So well I worried that he might have played onto the A team. Turns out that that the professionals had marked him as a likely cut after day 1 but were now seriously unsure about whether he was going to be on A or B. It was nice to have picked out some real talent that others had initially over looked.

One of the duties I had was to wait outside while everyone was picked up in between tryouts. After the 5th grade tryouts a kid asked me if I coached GL last year (he was one of many to do so). I said I did and he said that he had played on the dreaded JCC team last year. I asked him if he was trying out for them again and he said no, but when I followed up gave me no reason why. I was hoping he would bad mouth them so I could reinforce my negative image of them.

Then I get a phone call yesterday. Brian left me a voice mail and said that after looking over the kids and parents they were concerned about the make-up and would I be willing to move “down”, err over, to 4A. I called him back and agreed.

I have quite a few different feelings about this. On the one hand, I had originally wanted to coach an A team. However, after watching tryouts I grew really excited by the prospect of being able to do some neat stuff with sixth graders, who were absolutely light years ahead of the 5th graders, who were substantially ahead of the 4th graders. It was going to be a new challenge and I was excited by it. So on that level I was disappointed. However, I am happy about having an A team to coach. More than anything I wanted talent to work with and I had originally thought that to be an A team, though that had morphed into the B team. Then there is the whole fact that I have been effectively demoted before even starting. It’s a bit of an insult to me and I think I’m actually going to talk to Brian about it when I see him on Saturday. That said it doesn’t really bother me, as much as I think it should bother me, so I simply want to make it clear to him that I think of myself as capable and agreed to the change to be, well, agreeable and not out of inability. There is also the benefit that my life will be slightly less insane as the 4th graders only practice once a week until January as they are expected to play in house league.

Regardless, the teams are up. And I have 11 players. I am NOT excited about that. My ideal number to be at a game was always 8 or so since everyone got good playing time that way. Having one more player to juggle is going to make it that much harder to get everyone quality minutes AND to still go for victory. It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure. The only player on my team who I know is Gavin, who is the younger brother of Alec and Austin, volatile players from my baseball team. And because I can’t seem to coach a team lately without siblings, I also have a set of twins. I seem to recall that one twin was considerably better than the other during tryout so I am really hoping that twin 2 wasn’t the 11th player on the team because his brother was going to be on the team. Man that would suck so much to not only have 11 but have the 11th be a place who doesn’t deserve to be there. Hopefully that’s just not the case (or at least that brother is so good to make up for it ).

Anyhow what I’m really excited, and nervous, about is GL. As I mentioned last entry, I had a realization: I am a different sort of coach than most. Where most do drills, I try and do games as much as possible. At one point Eric, the head of HP Athletics, said to me “Bet they don’t do this at GL” and I could whole heartedly agree. I think that GL does it better, or at least I do it better. My tryouts are going to look substantially different than what went on in HP. We’re not going to have any crab walks (where they put the ball through their leg, take a step, put the ball back through their legs, and so on down the court) as that’s not a real basketball skill. We’re going to do a drill for rebounding. We’ll include more than 1 competition (not counting scrimmages). Hell, at the HP tryouts they never even bothered to introduce the people there. Talk about intimidating.

Anyhow, I hope to have an entry this weekend about my plan for GL’s tryouts. GL’s tryouts which are Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Have I mentioned that I’m excited and nervous? Yeah I have. But I really am both at the prospect of seeing who will or won’t come out. Who has improved. Who that didn’t make the team last year is ready to step up and join the team. More about all of this over the weekend.

HP Tryouts Day 1

Basketball season is officially upon us again. Since last season, I had an agonizing decision about what team to coach this year, as HP, came through with an offer for basketball. After a lot of contemplation, I decided that I would do both teams, which everyone agrees is insane. So today was Day 1 of tryouts for HP.

Basically it sucked. Not because of the players (more on that shortly) but because of the format. The way HP does tryouts is that they have the coaches as basically extra help. The tryouts themselves are conducted by Brian and Eric, my two bosses at HP. They also bring in some coaches from a local D3 school to be the evaluators. This already was a bad situation. Making things worse is that I don’t think I acquitted myself very well in the few things I was asked to do. I felt very unsure of my place, as it seemed to be clear that I was to be semi-invisible and so that’s what I did. I would have loved to have been able to not be in the backseat, but driving, but that’s not the way it was. Oh and further making things suck? I had to be there all day, for all three teams tryouts, and the gym was sweltering. It was just not good from top to bottom.

Also making this hard is that I will be coaching the sixth grade B team. I saw a lot of talent out there, but it’s hard to have any idea, since I have 0 input on the decision making, to know which players I might end up with. My gut tells me I’m going to get 3 or so tall guys without a lot of athletic ability. This will be interesting as I prefer an athletic game, but am sort of excited at the possibility of having to stretch myself as a coach and do a more post oriented game. What makes this even more funny is that the coach of last year’s 4th grade team is coaching again and told me how he wants a post player to build around, where as I was most impressed with a couple of 4th grade guards. I think we’d both be happier flipping roles, but oh well. Unlike in 4th grade, I think it is possible to have a team that plays really well due to post play at 6th grade. I have no conception of these kid’s names so when the list goes up on Wednesday I’m going to have no idea about the talent I’ll have. Anyhow, tomorrow the second day of tryout. According to the tryout plan, they end the tryout with kids divided up roughly based on their ranking so I should have an idea, based on who is in the second group of 10 who my players likely will be.

GL’s tryouts are a week from Monday and I’m so nervous and excited about those. More about that, as well as my realization about myself as a basketball coach, later on.

On a more housekeeping note, I’m committed, once again to doing this blog. However, with all agreeing that coaching 2 travel teams is a form of mental insanity, I’m not quite sure what I’ll be doing for this blog this year. Not sure if it makes more sense to focus more intensely on one of the teams, or try to do a less in depth coverage of both. We’ll find out as we go along, I suppose.

Finding Role Players

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m a pretty big fan of The Wages of Wins (WoW) which suggests that scoring is overrated in the NBA, and things like rebounding and shooting efficiency are underrated. Incorporating these findings is something I try and do with the stats I keep for basketball. I very much try to use objective measures tempered by qualitative judgments.

So, for instance, Jack P showed up very poorly on Win Score, the measure used to simply calculate a player’s performance as he was an incredibly inefficient shooter, and one who’d take a lot of shots. However, we often did better with him on the court because his penetration on offense opened up opportunities, and his man rarely seemed to score on defense. This could be tracked using +/- but I don’t really have that capability so I have to just go off of my judgment.

Anyhow, today on the WoW blog, Dave Berri, one of the authors of the book, discusses how messed up talent evaluation is in the NBA. Basically most players in the NBA are role players, but players are drafted on the basis of the ability to become stars, something most will never become. In other words they’re focusing on the wrong things when evaluating players.

This very much hits home with me. At this point I expect to be coaching two travel teams next year, including one in HP. With my team last year (GL), I had 16 kids try-out. In a group of that size I can do some more time intensive drills which test rebounding, assists, steals, and other things which help teams win games but aren’t shooting and scoring. However, in a large group try-out, evaluating rebounding skills, in particular, is far more difficult and is an obstacle I’ll likely have to over come.

Though maybe I should have more faith in myself, as there is a strong correlation between the grade I gave players on a 1-5 scale and their final rank on the team in terms of rebounds per minute played.

Anyhow, the whole idea of how to structure an evaluation of players that is centered more around finding role players rather than stars and scorers is an interesting one and something I will continue to ponder in the next 3 or so months before I have to conduct tryouts once again.

Thursday morning I woke up and made the final cut, Cameron. When I was telling the story to a friend, explaining how I took Gordie he quipped “So your receiving corp in football would be TO and Randy Moss?” Have to admit that stung a little. I did retort that taking Cameron was the equivalent of putting in Kerry Collins in as your QB “nice enough, but do you really want Kerry Collins?”

So basically right now we’re in a month long hiatus. My first practice is scheduled for October 23. With the Monday/Wednesday combination being bad news for Dante, and my own having commitments on Wednesdays I looked for a different day of the week for practices and came up with… Friday. Can’t wait to spend 6-7:30 on Fridays in a gym. Fortunately, after 5 weeks we can switch to Tuesdays for the rest of the season, which runs through the middle of March, making the season about 5 months long all together (and making the 10 weeks of Baseball seem like a sprint).

With the dynasty going on hold, essentially, for a month, though I will post any updates as they might happen, I thought it would be good to try and introduce the players. I’ve talked about many of these players already but let’s look at the Kid Coach's 2005-2006 4th Grade Travel Team.

I’d debated a few different ways of organizing this list. I’ve decided that I’m going to go by offensive position and, with-in position, skill, as I see it now. All players will be expected to learn 2 positions eventually as with only 10 players I need a good deal of flexibility in the players I can put on the court, especially for that game that’ll inevitably happen in February where one kid is sick, another has a twisted ankle, and a third is in Vail for the weekend.

Before I break it down by skill let me explain, roughly, what each of the responsibilities will be for each player in the offensive I am working on finalizing. This obviously could change as I work to break down what I want to run into a level that I know can be well taught to and learned by 4th graders.

1 Spot – Your traditional ball handler. He is going to be the player who’ll normally take the ball up the court. Will have primary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks, but depending on where in the offense we are, this could fall to the 2 or 3 player as well.

2 Spot – Stays primarily on the perimeter, though he will sometimes penetrate. Will often be the first look for the 1 player or else setup the first look (via screen). Has secondary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks.

3 Spot – In many ways the trickiest spot in the offense to play. Has both perimeter and post responsibilities, though because of the talent will be on the perimeter more than the post. Along with the 2 will be the first look for a pass from the 1.

4 Spot – Is primarily involved in post play, though not exclusively. He will come out of the post often either to help screen or in order to clear space for the 3 or 5. Is the least likely to shoot the ball.

5 Spot – Your traditional center. Primarily in the post. Is almost always responsible for rebounding.

You will notice that I've written about perimeter play. This is a tad misleading as while they often do their work there, I do not really want my team shooting, for the most part, beyond 10 feet. This means that we’re using the outside to create space/opportunities to work it inside. I expect to see a lot of zone so we’ll be working on zone busting skills such as quick (and skip) passes. Also important will be the concept of screening to get someone the ball not for someone with the ball.

And without further ado, this time for real, let me present my 2006-2007 4th Grade Travel Basketball Team. An asterisk means that if I fielded a basketball team tomorrow they would be starting.

½
*Noah (primary 2) Obviously positions are still fluid at this point. I have slotted Noah here tentatively because of his skills, but his size might find him in more of a 2/3 role before things are all said and done especially as we have, as expected, a surplus of guards. As mentioned before, I like his penetration skills, which shows his ability to dribble so he could even end up finding himself playing more of a 1. While his shooting form might not be the prettiest, he is accurate. During the scrimmage I said that the next time he drove in he should find a team mate to pass it to and he did exactly that suggesting he is willing to implement instruction. He did a few other things, such as mostly pay attention, that suggest he will be teachable (or in this case coachable).

Jack M (primary 1) First let me say there is a definite chance that I have the Jacks backwards. I think I have it straight, but am not sure. Anyhow, short Jack has a nice dribble and can do it with both hands. He is inconsistent, which is actually a complement at this age, at dribbling with his head up. He’s a pretty scrawny kid. Has an average attention span for a 4th grade boy, which is to say not a whole lot.

Gordie (primary 1) Gordie is a small kid. However, he’s got a good shot and better range than some of the kids taller than him. I’ve discussed him pretty indepth in my last post so not a whole lot to add here. I will just stress that the negatives that I talked about before could really impact his role on this team.

Tom (primary 2) It might seem weird that he is ranked below Gordie, who was the last player to make the team, but of course it wasn’t Gordie’s skills holding him back. I was really hoping Tom would have been be able to play a 3 for us, but he’s not there yet and I’m not sure that trying to make him into a forward, even a soft forward, is the best use of his practice time.

2/3
*Brian (primary 2) Brian is a very solid player all around. Not quite as solid is his personality. On more than one occasion he made a negative comment during tryouts. Something like that I am quite confident of my ability to stomp out. I simply don’t tolerate it. In fact, I will likely be opening our first practice with my saying something to the effect of “I’m the coach and I’m here to help you grow and to help you win. Your job as players are to listen to me and to support your teammates>” Or something like that. Anyhow, Brian is tentatively slotted as a 2/3, as I think we have some better dribblers than him, though he does have a good crossover.

3/4
*Jack P (primary 3) The more I see of him the more he impresses. He did well in our lightening game, I believe, and seems pretty solid all around. I also really liked his attitude which goes well with his, seemingly, easy going nature. I hesitate to comment too much about kid’s personalities as for the most part they’ll be different creatures in a tryout situation, what with the nerves, than during the course of a basketball season.

Scott (primary 3) The least talented of the triplets, though still pretty darn good, he seems like he’ll be well suited to these positions. Not a whole lot to comment here.

4/5
*Dante (primary 5): Again I feel like I’ve talked about him a lot. I will say that I was tempted to inquire about the soccer playing backgrounds of my players and feel particularly pleased to learn that someone I thought highly of is also a competitive soccer player as I feel good soccer players often can easily be turned into good basketball players.

Lucas (primary 5): Poor Lucas seemed somewhat surprised that I saw him as a forward/center. He seems like a real good kid. Here’s another kid who I see a fair amount of potential in and hope to see him really grow as the season progresses.

???
*David I’m not sure where to place him. I wished he had been at the 3rd day of tryouts since I think I’d have gotten a better grasp. And perhaps I am overstating his skills, but then again maybe I’m not. He’s likely going to be our point guard, because of his ball handling skills, but he could end up really at any of the positions 1-4, though realistically 4 is not likely going to be where he’d end up on offense.

I will try and post as I come up with firmer plans for things, but in all likelihood, as mentioned before, the dynasty is on a brief hiatus until practices start in October.

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.