When I started coaching basketball about 12 years ago it was more out of necessity than any planned design. My son needed a coach and no one was willing to step up to do it. I had been a coach and vice president for the local little league and had always had a love for basketball. However, my experiences with it were more along the lines of playing with friends in school and watching and rooting for the state college team.
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August 24, 2009
I have just started to add the actual drills for basketball to my site and I must confess I am as excited by doing it as I was when I first started researching to become a coach. It has reawakened that love for the intricacies and subtleties of this wonderful game that have laid dormant since I stopped coaching. I have been going through my old videos, my old notes and practices, and exploring the net to see what new and exciting resources are there. What I have found is there is no better time in history to be a youth basketball coach. There is so much information available that you could spend the next five years studying, researching and learning, without cracking a dent in the knowledge base. Information that once required being associated with an elite basketball program is readily passed out for all to learn, often free or for very little money.
August 17, 2009
Whether you are a coach or a parent, one of the most important things you will do when teaching basketball skills is picking age appropriate drills. If you are a coach your practice time with your team is limited and picking the wrong drills for basketball means that the valuable skills that your players need will not be developed. And often the drills you are working on won’t succeed because the skills needed to accomplish them aren’t there. For a parent it is just as important to pick the right drills as your child’s love for the game and therefore their success with it will often develop from the successes they achieve with the drills. If you start them off with drills that are too complex or require prior skills that they haven’t mastered, not only can it get them frustrated and have them lose interest, but it can also make them develop bad form. This can often result in temporary success at the drill, while ensuring long term failure at the skill. I often wonder when seeing some of the shooting styles of players that lack any semblance of good technique, how much of it is because they started shooting at hoops too high or from a distance to far, forcing them to chuck up the ball just so they can see it hit the rim and occasionally go in.
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