HP Clinic 1

My post about my GL tryouts will be going up tomorrow, but today is a special bonus post since it was the first of 3 clinics for HP basketball. Today was my first chance to start to put together what my team was going to be like. These clinics are option so of the 11 players on my team I think 8 of my 11 players were there. The clinics were divided into 4th/5th and 6th grade clinics. Today’s (and next Sunday’s, I believe) was focused on defense. With the younger age group this meant a lot of footwork drills, while the older group did a bunch of work with man to man defense, something I’m sorry my kids didn’t get.

I think my team has definite potential from what I saw, though they don’t know yet that they’re my team as it’s a secret until Tuesday (dumb if you ask me). Things sort of started off perfectly as one of the first kids to arrive was Adam, a short quick player who will be a guard. So he was shooting and being 9 was doing what many 9 year olds do in using their upper body, rather than lower body in shooting. After he’d missed a couple of shots outside his range I suggested he try using his legs to get more power. Fortunately he made his next couple of shots.

The twins Ben and Jon (they’re not identical so I THINK I can tell them apart) both look like they’ll be good players and are likely to be my post stalwarts. At the end of the clinic their father was waiting in the gym as the players were attempting to make 70 full court layups, with four balls, in 4 minutes. Their father made a “suggestion” to one of them that was not well received by the son, not to mention was not a suggestion I’d have made.

Then there is Gavin. Gavin is going to be a show boat. We were doing a free throw drill and he bragged to me how he made 5 shots (a legitimately good amount in that drill) and then repeated it 2 more times as I talked to some other player. I finally said “that’s pretty good but I did hear you the first time”. Not really pleased at my lack of awe he proceeded to try and tell another coach, at which point I pointed out that his individual accomplishment didn’t mean as much considering it was a team oriented drill. Fortunately, Gavin’s mother thinks I walk on water so at least I’ll have parent support to start with.

Besides this my players are a kind of mush in my head though again I was overall pleased with them. The exception to this is Josh. Josh is a shorter pudgy kid who did not impress me with anything today and very much looked like B team material. From what I saw today he wouldn’t have made my GL team last year so for him to be on the A team is remarkable and I will be paying pretty close attention to him next week in the hope that he just had an off day.

I did talk to Brian about the switch asking him “Should I be worried about the change”. His answer was no, but really the answer is yes. He went “we want you to be successful” and then explained how there is a lot of potential BS with the 6B team and they didn’t want me, as new to the program, to be caught up in that. He also commented how well the players responded to me, especially during a drill that I was able to lead.

I still think that the 6th graders would have been fun to coach. And I know I could have handled them, as one player said to a friend after I had just asked him not to sit down “He scares me but he seems awesome” which I like as an initial impression. I feel more excited about the team now that I’ve seen some of the talent, as I hadn’t paid too much attention to the talent during tryouts (why would I bother?). Interestingly enough, the one kid who I had pegged as a good player is on the B team. Hopefully that’s a good sign.