There are three primary ways to affect change and achieve desired outcomes within a sports organization: coach education, curriculum, and changing the game. Everyone changes the game without realizing it. Youth basketball leagues prevent zone defenses or prevent full-court presses; these are ways that leagues re-design the game to create desired outcomes. Softball instituted the 10-run rule, baseball uses a tee, volleyball invented the libero: these are all re-designs of the game to achieve desired outcomes.

Sports System re-Design is redesigning the sport experience to get a desired outcome. I was honored to be a mentor at the event due to my experience founding the Playmakers Basketball Development League. The PBDL incorporated the basic ideas of SSrD to achieve several desired outcomes:

1. Coach cooperation
2. Emphasis on skill development, not winning
3. Increased opportunities to perform skills
4. Exposure to better coaching
5. Equal playing time
6. More court time/less sitting

An  unintended outcome that have arisen due to the structure of the league has been the reduction of negative parental involvement. While many leagues complain about the behavior of parents during games due to yelling at players and officials, and sometimes each other, these problems seem to go away with the PBDL due to its inherent structure.

When the organizers described SSrD, they suggested that re-design is “experimenting with discrete elements in your sport system to achieve specific outcomes.” Essentially, this means:

1. Making the path to the outcome easier
2. Making the path to the outcome unavoidable
3. Making the path to undesired outcomes more difficult

By playing 3v3, skill development becomes easier. More playing time and additional opportunities to perform skills becomes unavoidable. At the same time, the structure of the league helps to reduce coach and parent ego involvement, which creates a more positive experience for each child. All of these outcomes are achieved without sacrificing the integrity of the game, as no skill in basketball requires more than three players.

Furthermore, 3v3 answers many of the questions posed by inexperienced or unskilled players. Should we allow zone defense? Should we allow presses? These types of decisions are negated by reducing the number of players on the court.

Throughout the conference, attendees extended their imagination and arrived at innovative solutions to complex problems in youth sports. For instance, why not have youth baseball players pitch to each other to increase the likelihood of hit balls and to eliminate walks? Why not treat quarters in basketball or hockey or innings in baseball like sets in volleyball? Rather than worry about a 20-point rule or running clock during a blowout, play first to three sets.

When working through these ideas, attendees were given four directions or guidelines:

1. Go for quantity
2. Try wishing
3. Practice “Yes, and….” rather than “but…”
4. Absolutely no discounting of ideas

With that in mind, what crazy ideas could a basketball league adopt to make the league better?

The organizers introduced a five-step model of SSrD:

1. Understand SSrD
2. Current reality assessment
3. Goal setting
4. Re-Design
5. Formalize your SSrD

In my example, my current reality assessment was that there had to be a better way to develop youth basketball players. I believe that coaches volunteer of their time because they want to help children and provide a good experience. I do not believe that any coaches originally sign up to volunteer with a youth team because they want to win a meaningless trophy or create a poor environment for children. However, when games start, and coaches coach in the fish bowl, every coach wants to show his or her competence. Since we judge coaches based on won-loss record, coaches are invested in the success of their teams. There is ego involvement associated with winning games. I wanted to devise a way to remove the ego involvement and return coaches to their original state: creating a good environment for children and helping all the players.

Beyond the coaches, I wanted to create a game where coaches do not hide players and all players are more involved in the game. I wanted to increase the number of repetitions, much as Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code) alludes to futsal as an important element in the development of Brazilian soccer players due to the increased number of repetitions.

How would you assess your current league? What problems would you attempt to fix? If anything was possible, and no idea would be dismissed, what would you do? How would you re-design your league or your sport to achieve your desired outcomes?

That was the objective of the conference: To get coaches from a variety of organizations to imagine possibilities to improve youth sports and to set in motion these changes by inspiring these coaches and league administrators. The conference was a huge success and a great event for everyone who attended. If you want information on the next Change the Game conference, check out their blog.

Imagine. Experiment. Assess.

What would you like to see in a youth basketball league? How can we make the game better?

By Brian McCormick, M.S.S., PES
Coach/Clinician, Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

Zichermann mentions a talk by Andrea Kuszewski where she gave five reasons for games ability to develop fluid intelligence or the ability to solve problems.

1. Seek novelty
2. Challenge yourself
3. Think creatively
4. Do things the hard way
5. Network

In previous generations, these five things may have explained the popularity of youth sports. However, in this generation, these things are largely absent from youth sports. Rather than seek novelty, children specialize in one sport, and even one position, at a young age. Rather than challenging oneself, parents holdback children to give their child a competitive advantage, while coaches stack teams to win at all costs.  Rather than think creatively, players follow the coach’s script and are punished for creative plays. Rather than do things the hard way, players train with trainers and learn through repetitive block drills to ensure success. Rather than network with other children, children are, to quote my high-school cross country, “here to win, not to fraternize with other teams.”

When I was young, I learned the game, to a large degree, at Rollingwood Racquet Club. There was a half court with one hoop, and I played there every Sunday night at a minimum. I played against adults, college students, and high school players before I reached high school. I learned new moves and new shots because I was playing against older, taller, and stronger players, and I had to adjust to have any success.

My experience was normal, but today’s youth sports environment differs considerably. To find these novel, challenging, creative and social experiences, children increasingly avoid sports and gravitate toward video games for these experiences. How disappointing is it that playing video games provide these experiences better than sports? As society gamifies, the sporting world, and especially youth sports, appears to be one of the last industries to embrace these ideas.

Rather than focus on competition, specialization, all-star teams, and the other things that leagues, organizations, trainers, and coaches use to differentiate their programs, why not focus on these five ideas from video games? How can a youth sports organization create novel experiences? How can a coach or league encourage players to think creatively? How can a coach or league create challenges or do things the hard way? How can a coach or league make the team or league more social?

These are the types of questions that coaches and leagues need to ask and answer to make better experiences for the players.

By Brian McCormick, M.S.S., PES
Coach/Clinician, Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

This is what happens:

First, the coach develops a perception about the post player that “predicts the level of performance and type of behavior that athlete will exhibit over the course of the season” (Horn, Lox, & Labrador, The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Theory: When Coaches’ Expectations Become Reality). In this case, the coach perceives the post player not to be as good as the coach would like.

Next, the expectations influence the coach’s treatment of the players (Horn et al.). When the coach has a negative expectation of the player, the coach is quick to blame the player for mistakes or to substitute the player for a perceived mistake. For instance, the opponent gets an offensive rebound, so the coach quickly blames the post player. However, if the coach looked at the cause of the offensive rebound, the mistake can be traced back to a guard who allowed dribble penetration which forced the post player to rotate to stop the penetration, leaving his or her opponent undefended. However, in good team defense, when the post player rotates to stop the ball, a weak side defender should rotate to the undefended offensive post player. Therefore, the offensive rebound could be attributed to the guard who allowed dribble penetration or the weak-side defender who did not “help the helper”. Unfortunately, because the coach has a perception of the post player as being slow or lazy or not good enough, the offensive rebound is attributed to the post player, and the post player is removed from the game.

Eventually, the way that the coach treats the player affects the player’s learning (Horn et al.). In this case, the post player may learn not to help on dribble penetration and simply block out his or her own player. The player may become dejected on the bench and play with less enthusiasm when returned to the game. The player may not practice as hard, as he or she learns that nothing is good enough to please the coach, and all mistakes are blamed on him or her.

Finally, since the player reduces his or her effort or changes her approach, the performance tends to conform to the coach’s initial expectations (Horn et al.). Because the post player does not play as hard or does not rotate to help or does not practice as hard, the post player is not a very good player or is lazy on the court.

Coach’s initial judgements come from many areas. Often, other coaches affect one’s assessment of a player, and that assessment affects the coach’s behaviors. When I took over a women’s professional team in Europe, the former coach took me to lunch and told me about all of the players. In particular, he described my power forward as a troublemaker who was lazy and out of shape, and he described my shooting guard as the best defensive player in the league.

From the beginning, I maintained the same starting line-up as the previous season, except at center where the starter had retired. I did not allow the coach’s comments about the PF to affect my judgement; it was clear to me after one practice that she was the best player on the team. I interacted differently with her than the previous coach, who had a negative perception of the player, and she had career highs in points and rebounds, started in the all-star game, and was a legitimate player of the year candidate. I don’t think that I did much to make her a more skilled player; it was not player development that led to her career highs. It was her fitting perfectly into a system that I prefer, and my empowering her with confidence through my positive belief in her ability, rather than the previous coach’s negative perceptions.

On the shooting guard, however, I did allow his comments to affect me. When the player missed a shot, I ignored the misses. When her player scored, I ignored the baskets. He had flavored my perceptions of this player in a positive direction. When a coach has a positive perception of a player, he ignores mistakes as aberrations or normal mistakes that everyone mistakes. When the player makes a positive play, it confirms the coach’s perception of the player.

After a couple games, I watched our game tapes over and over. I noticed that this player was not our best defensive player, as the coach had said, but probably our worst defender. She tried hard, but she was beaten off the dribble frequently and was often out of position on rotations. Worse, she was shooting 23% from the three-point line as our “best shooter”.

She was a popular player and important for team chemistry, so I did not want to bench her. I also liked our better SG coming off the bench to give us a lift, and I felt it suited her personality better as a rookie. But, I started to reduce the starter’s minutes. I also experimented with two younger players who the former coach had nearly ruined the previous season. They did not set the world on fire, but they shot better than 23% and played better defense.

Finally, it became apparent that it was time not to start her. She came to me to complain. The former coach had gotten in her ear. She was not mad about the new starter, as she was a borderline all-star and our second-leading scorer, but she complained about the younger players who were getting a chance. The veterans disliked these players and did not rate them at all because the former coach never played them (combined 36 minutes the entire previous season) and did not give them opportunities in practice. He decided that they were not good and his perceptions were inflexible. However, the former starter missed a game due to illness even though she knew we were down to eight players, and the younger players played and acquitted themselves well against the best team in the league. Her absence gave me a chance to play the younger players prolonged minutes, and they did well. I explained to the former starter that she was not shooting well, she was not defending well, and the other players had been outperforming her in practice and games. It was nothing personal, but it was time to give other players a chance in games to see if their performance matched their practice performance. In retrospect, I could have handled the situation better, but that story is for another day.

My perceptions were flexible. I gave chances to players who were deemed originally not to be good enough to be in the rotation, and I reduced opportunities for the player who was originally perceived to be our best defender. Typically, however, coaches tend to be inflexible in their judgements. Once they deem a player to be important, they rarely change their perception despite objective and subjective evidence.

I watch a team where the 7th best player on the team starts and plays 38 minutes a game. The coach acknowledges that this player is the only one who the coach trusts. The other guards are better passers, better on-ball defenders, and better shooters. How does the coach’s perceptions affect the coach’s behavior of the player? How do they affect the coach’s behavior toward the other players? How do they affect playing time, feedback, etc.? When this player makes a mistake, the coach ignores it. When another player makes a mistakes, the player is pulled from the game immediately. How does that affect the other players’ confidence when they have one eye looking over their shoulder at the bench after each play? Alternatively, when the player knows that she is going to play 38 minutes a game regardless of mistakes, how much more confident is that player? Every good play confirms the coach’s perceptions of her importance, while every bad play by the others confirms the coach’s lack of trust. You can see the difference in body language between the players, and its affect on performance. For confirmation, the team should have finished first or second in its league (based on talent), but instead finished next to last.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is one of the biggest issues in coaching. I am aware of it and always attempt to avoid inflexible perceptions. I regularly have a coaching associate watch a practice or game simply to assess my behaviors toward the players to make sure that I treat players fairly. Personally, I do not take out players for a mistake. Some coaches do. However, either way, it should be consistent or you are telling your players something. If you take out one player for a mistake, but not the other, the players learn who the coach trusts. The one who gets take out loses confidence, while the one who plays through mistakes gains confidence. The coach’s behaviors affect their development, much like my behaviors affected the PFs development and performance.

Often, these perceptions affect practice coaching too. A coach will spend extra time with a good player or a player perceived to be good or to have potential, but not with a lesser player. All these actions send signals to players. A coach may tell a bad player “Good” after every play, even a mistake, which may tell the player that the coach has a very low opinion of his ability. Meanwhile, the coach gives the good players informative feedback after a mistake because he expects them to perform better.

These actions and behaviors are often subconscious and with no malicious intent. It’s just what a coach does when trying to win games. However, a coach needs to be cognizant of the effect of these behaviors and actions on the players, and work to avoid the inflexible perceptions. No coach is perfect 100% of the time. However, those who are aware of the self-fulfilling prophecy and its effects can avoid becoming a coach who is ruled by his or her initial perceptions.

By Brian McCormick, M.S.S., PES
Coach/Clinician, Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

In sports, these words are used almost as synonyms. Coaching, teaching, and training are used without much thought to the differences between them. The video offers an interesting thought: education (teaching) and training are not synonymous. Training is a “reductionist goal; it’s aim is to refine an existing action.” Education is an “expansive goal; its aim is to increase the number of potential actions.”

The video asks: Which direction to take: get better at something that already exists or learn something new?

That is such an important point in coaching. What is a coach’s purpose? In some ways, there is the existing thought that “players are made in the summer, and teams are made in the winter.” With this line of thinking, coaching errs more toward training, as the goal is to refine the actions for performance. This makes the off-season the time for education, or increasing the number of potential actions.

Interestingly, we refer to coaches who do the training during the season as “teachers”, and refer to the trainers who do the educating in the off-season as “trainers”.

This offers another interesting point for trainers: are trainers or individual skill coaches training players – that is refining skills that are already there – or are they educating players by developing new skills or potential actions?

In the current basketball environment, where does the education occur? During the competitive season, the appropriate method probably is training, the reductionist approach where the goal is to sharpen the existing skills. However, if the competitive season runs year-round, as it seems to do now, when does the education occur?

From another perspective, rather than looking at periods in the season, one can look at periods in the overall development of a player, or the age groups. Younger age groups should be about education, as coaches increase the potential actions for players. Oftentimes, children’s growth is impeded because of a reductionist approach at a young age. How many coaches tell a 10-year-old post player not to dribble the ball? Is that a training or educative environment? At 10 years old, what should the environment be?

Winning and losing often turns a developmental or educative environment into a training environment, even with young players. The easiest way to win at a young age is to constrain players through external oversight. That’s why you hear a lot of youth coaches saying “don’t dribble,” “don’t shoot from there”, “pass to jimmy”, etc. Rather than create an expansive environment that likely leads to experimentation, mistakes and turnovers, in the process of growth, the coach creates a reductionist approach where he attempts to eliminate potential actions that could result in mistakes and turnovers, like the 10-year-old post player dribbling.

There is an interesting dichotomy. Are you training players or educating them? If you’re engaged in training, when does the education of the player occur?

By Brian McCormick, M.S.S., PES
Coach/Clinician, Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

By chance, a coach from Canada named Andrew MacKay emailed this week for a link to my books. He mentioned his role with his organization, and I was intrigued. MacKay is the Director of Coaching Development for Kitchener Waterloo Youth Basketball Association, about an hour from Toronto, Canada. I asked Coach MacKay a few questions to learn more about his role as Director of Coaching Development and to share with others as we push for more coach development in our youth organizations.

BM: What would the league compare to in the U.S.? Is your area club-based? Is it like a recreation-center league or a private league?

MacKay: We are a club.  We have a rep program and a house league program.  One team at each of U19, U17, U16, U15, U14, U13, U12, U11, U10.  The house league program covers same ages.

BM: How many players play in your league? How much does the league cost?

MacKay: In house league, I believe there are about 500 kids in 5 different leagues.  They pay $200 early bird, or $225 after certain date.

BM: How many coaches?

MacKay: House league varies on number of teams.  We will say 35-50 coaches.  Every rep team has head coach and one or two assistants

BM: Is your position a paid position?

MacKay: Not a paid position!

BM: What does your position entail? What are your duties? How many hours per week?

MacKay: I sit on the Board of Directors, so I have some input and votes on direction and decisions we make as a club.  As of right now, I am defining my role.  We start the year with a couple coaching clinics for the house league coaches.  We actually just put one on tonight.  I took them through a number of drills for children.  They received a handout with a page each on dynamic warm up, warm-up games, shooting, dribbling, passing and transition & playing drills.  I then quickly ran the kids through the drills.  I am involved with our house league evaluation night, again running drills and being a role model for both the kids and the coaches.  Showing them the energy I bring to the gym and how to keep kids engaged, make proper corrections and what to focus their teaching on.  Last season I ran a practice for each of our rep teams and invited in the house league coaches from that particular age group to watch.  It was an opportunity to see where the kids were in their development, to show all the coaches some new drills and help them with what they should be focusing on.  I’m planning on a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter this year to offer some tips as well as direct them to good information on the net – sites like yours!  And I’m looking for other ways to help them.

BM: Based on your experience, are there feasible ways for a position like yours to make a bigger impact? Do you have any visions for where you would like to take the position or things you would like to accomplish in the position?

MacKay: Eventually, I would like to control what our coaches are teaching their kids.  Without forcing, I’d like them to have a practice plan template that they can drag and drop drills into easily, so that they all have a plan when they go to the gym, they are spending the right amount of time on specific skills for the appropriate ages and it cuts down on their prep time.  I’d like to be at practices more often and help coaches to learn how to teach the kids and connect with them better.  I’d also like to build an online resource that they can access for tips and info.  All in due time.

BM: Do you have a way to measure the impact of the coach development position?

MacKay: Other than asking for feedback – and making a point of asking for positive and negative – is about it for now.  A survey would probably help increase response, but I haven’t pursued that as of yet.

Key points: The position is something that every youth organization should establish. An experienced coach to mentor coaches through directing coaches to good resources, organizing clinics and running practices for coaches to watch and learn. The next goal should be to find a way to fund these positions to ensure qualified and experienced coaches. Why can’t a local high school coach oversee coach development for a youth league if he or she was compensated for his or her time and effort? The original Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development outlined a plan involving coaches up and down the development stream.

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

I just spoke to Allison McNeil, the Head Coach of Canada’s Women’s National Team about a clinic that she ran this weekend. She lamented the same issues of running clinics for volunteer coaches. However, her clinic cost $135, but the coaches paid only $50 due to government grants. Furthermore, she said that the provincial government wants every child to have a certified coach by 2015! While that is an ambitious plan, what an ambition to have!

Such a plan demonstrates a commitment to youth sports; it shows an interest in youth sports as an important element of a balanced childhood. The plan demonstrates a desire to provide the best possible environment for its youth athletes.

Since I wrote Cross Over: The New Model for Youth Basketball Development, I have written frequently about the basketball system in the United States and elsewhere. My biggest contention is not that the U.S. system does not work or is broken, but that it is not as good as it can be. With the money invested in basketball in the United States, I do not understand the apathy for searching for and building an improved system that meets the needs of all youth basketball players.

Volunteer coaches are the lifeblood of most youth sports organizations. However, as much as we value youth sports (and look at the attendance at the Little League World Series), and especially youth basketball, there should be an effort to create a better environment.

I spoke to a local recreation center recently. They have over 2400 children involved in basketball every year. Why not offer the opportunity for parents to add $1 to their registration fee to go toward coach development? Even if only one-quarter of the parents opt in, $600 is sufficient to pay for most one-day clinics. The organization could pay the clinician a $500 fee and have a raffle for coaches who participate for a $100 gift certificate to a local restaurant. This pays for the clinic through volunteer contributions and provides an incentive for coaches to attend.

Obviously, government grants or funding from the NBA, NCAA or USA Basketball would be ideal. However, without this funding, which does not appear to be coming any time soon, organizations have a responsibility to make efforts to improve their programming.

Imagine if all 2400 parents contributed $1. The organization could pay a mentor coach to assist dozens of coaches by attending practices and offering pointers and evaluations. The organization could purchase coaching materials for the coaches. There are many ways the money could be spent.

Alternatively, the YBCA offers a FREE online coach education course. Is it too much to ask of volunteers to work through a one to two-hour course on basic concepts of coaching?

If our government is uninterested in providing an ambitious plan or funding like in British Columbia; if the NBA, NCAA and ihoops are uninterested in leading reforms, including coach education; and if local organizations appear unwilling to use creative methods to finance better programming or efforts to improve coaching, what does that say about the way that we value youth sports?

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

In reality, coaches like Hurley and Keller are the outliers; most coaches, and in fact the average coach if there is such a thing, falls on a spectrum somewhere between Hurley and Keller. The average coach, if you were able to quantify every coach who works with 6-18 year olds in the United States, is more likely to be a volunteer mom or dad or a semi-volunteer high school teacher than a could-be professional coach like Hurley or a money-sucking child exploiter like Keller (based on the depiction in George Dohrmann’s Play Their Hearts Out).

The need for reform or more coach development has nothing to do with intentions. I firmly believe that 99% of coaches start coaching for the right reasons. I do not believe that anyone signs up to coach thinking that they are going to ruin a child’s life or intentionally teach the wrong things. However, that happens. Often, it happens because the coach does not know better. They have vague memories of their childhood experiences playing sports, and they emulate those. Of course, we remember emotional experiences far more than the mundane, so many people remember their coaches as yellers and screamers even if it happened infrequently because those are the emotional experiences etched into their memories, while the daily activities which more typified the experience are long forgotten.

While learning from a mentor is valuable, blindly doing what someone did 20 years ago is not. If I ate the food that I ate as a child, there is no way that I would maintain my current weight. Food recommendations have changed. When I was young, Gatorade was viewed as a health beverage, while chocolate milk was deemed bad because of the sugar. Now, many in sports recommend skipping the Gatorade, but drinking chocolate milk as a post-exercise recovery beverage. When I was young, pasta and cereal were health foods; now, many suggest moderate intakes of each because of the carbohydrates. When I was young, fat was evil. Now, there are good fats and bad fats. If I fed my son as I was fed, and my parents had every intention of providing healthy, nutritious food, I would violate many of the new ideas on healthy eating and food consumption.

In coaching, things that were standard procedures when I was a young player are no longer viewed as best practices. Few if any sports scientists would recommend that basketball players run long distances at a slow jog as pre-season training or static stretch before practice, but that was conventional wisdom when I played. Because it was conventional wisdom, and every coach did it, those who coach today without any additional education or exposure to new ideas and training methodologies perpetuate these practices from a bygone era. They are not intentionally coaching poorly; they simply are not professional coaches and do not spend hours researching sports science because they teach history, raise families, etc.

While these coaches should not be criticized for their volunteer efforts, we also should not stand by idly as they perpetuate poor practices for another generation. Rather than allow coaches to languish on their own, and face the wrath of parents who expect professional coaching at recreational-league prices, leagues and governing bodies should attempt to assist these coaches through coaching materials, affordable clinics, mentoring and more.

Parents will not send their child to an unlicensed barber, yet they will drop off their son or daughter and leave them with a coach who in all likelihood has no formal training as a coach. Bars require bartenders to be licensed mixologists and to have a certificate in handling food, yet we expect nothing from those who play such an important role in the development of our children at young and impressionable ages.

Youth sport is when athletes need the best coaching. Initially, athletes need coaches who inspire or ignite a passion for the game and for improving. After playing for a year or two, players need good instructors who can enhance players fundamental skill development. Players who fail to develop the interest in playing at a young age and/or who do not develop good skills by the early teens are much less likely to continue playing either by choice or by cut. These coaches are tasked with teaching the basics and establishing the right practice habits and attitude for the sport and training. By comparison, teaching plays to experienced, knowledgeable, motivated college players is a much less complex job. College coaching has its complexities and challenges, but they are reduced from an on-court perspective when they are able to recruit players who have been well-coached as youths and high school players.

It would be ideal if we had a system to pay youth coaches to make youth coaching a full-time job. This would raise expectations, and it would make coach education and development a mandatory requirement for aspiring coaches. As it is, however, we rely on the generosity of volunteers to sustain our youth sports, and we should never forget that. My youth coaches were a real estate broker, an accountant, a couple doctors, a call center manager, a history teacher, a 5th grade teacher, a construction worker and a Gap manager. They went to work early or worked weekends to be able to coach my teams. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them and appreciate everything that they did for my teams.

I was lucky. On the spectrum of coaches from Hurley to Keller, my coaches were far closer to Hurley than Keller. Unfortunately, it seems like every student who took my Introduction to Coaching course this summer had a coach who was much closer to Keller than Hurley. Some coaches were poor because of their treatment of athletes, and some were poor because of their lack of knowledge. My coaches made up for a lack of knowledge, especially in soccer as it was a fairly new sport in the early 80s, with their enthusiasm and ability to create a great team environment. I may not have learned to “Ben it like Beckham” or even to juggle a soccer ball, but I had fun, stayed in shape and made friends, and have nothing but good memories.

Could my coaches have better? Sure. They coached in an era before the Internet and when ESPN was one very new channel, not an ubiquitous sports enterprise. I never saw “real” soccer until late in high school. Finding new and current information and connecting with other coaches was more difficult then. However, after we developed an interest in the game, we could have used more technical and tactical instruction to improve our fundamentals and game understanding.

This is the need for coach education. Well-meaning coaches who want to develop their players, but who lack the time to search through the Internet or bookstores to decipher the good information from the bad. Leagues and governing bodies need to do the searching and sorting for the coaches.

While we need to appreciate our volunteer coaches, we also need to raise the expectations. Being a warm body should not be enough to coach youth sports. A 1-3-hour coach training should not be too much to expect, even from a volunteer. According to the Duracell commercial, something like 50-60% of firemen are volunteers: do they simply show up at a fire? They are volunteers, yet I assume that they go through training and are required to sustain some sort of fitness level as well as a working knowledge of firefighting procedures. Do our homes deserve greater protection and commitment than our children?

Leagues and governing bodies have a responsibility to create a convenient, painless coach development program for their volunteer coaches, and coaches – whether teachers or volunteers – have a responsibility to do more than show up on time. This isn’t about winning and losing games; it’s about creating great experiences for children, much like those that I was lucky to have as a child.

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

The epidemic boils down to two issues: (1) Lack of education and dissemination of information to coaches and (2) the Peak by Friday mentality.

The female body differs from the male body, especially after puberty. These differences, according to most experts, affect or even cause the disparity of injury rates between males and females. To suggest otherwise is foolish based on what is known currently.

However, researchers have amassed plenty of evidence to suggest that anatomy is not the sole reason for the disparity. I am uninterested in the arguments of the male vs. female body because there is little that I can do to change someone’s anatomy. The other issues, however, can be impacted by training and skill development and therefore interest me.

Are injuries a result of poor coaching? Yes. Are they a result of poor parenting? Often. However, in most cases, these coaches and parents are not malicious. There is no intent to harm. There is ignorance. There is a void in the education of coaches, especially in terms of movement-related skills. As I wrote recently, basketball coaches, even at the NCAA or WNBA (or should I say especially at the NCAA and WNBA levels), are not movement experts.

Youth coaches typically volunteer their time and are not Coaches, but parents who work, raise children and coach as a hobby or to spend time with their sons or daughters.  Rather than blaming these coaches, as a semi-recent New York Times article appeared to imply, we need to cherish these parents who volunteer, as there would be far less opportunity for children, especially females, to play sports without the volunteer coaches. Rather than chastising these coaches, we need to nurture and provide them with resources. If we are to place blame, the blame should fall on the organizations who sponsor and generate income from the leagues, camps and tournaments that fail to nurture coaches and provide coaching resources.

At the high school level, we also have part-time coaches. They teach or work another job and coach for a small stipend. Even if they had the interest, the stipend they receive would barely cover the cost of attending a great conference to learn more (and I am not talking about Nike Clinics).

These are our coaches at the developmental levels: volunteers, amateurs and part-time coaches. However, these are the years of growth and development. The developmental years are the time when athletes develop practice habits, techniques, skills and mechanics. If these are developed incorrectly or inefficiently, these athletes must re-learn their habits, techniques or skills at a later age or they simply fall out of the competitive stream because they can no longer compensate for their deficiencies.

In the United States, our professional coaches, for the most part, coach at in the NCAA and WNBA. We should place higher demands on these coaches, as they earn an income commiserate with high expectations. However, to my knowledge, not one women’s college basketball coach attended the Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group conference despite it falling during a relatively dead period (first weekend of June). How many colleges are within a two-hour drive of Northeastern University? There were no fewer than three presentations directly related to ACL injury prevention, and several others that were relevant, yet nobody attended. Why? Because basketball coaches specialize in basketball. They are hired to win games, not to keep their players safe.

The second problem is that this mentality seeps into the lower levels, and our expectations for coaches at every level center on winning. Good coaches win; bad coaches lose. We cannot differentiate one’s coaching ability from their record.

Therefore, coaches take a Peak by Friday approach to their teams; they concentrate on the next game, not on their athletes’ development. If you ask most coaches to spend 10-15 per minutes at practice on movement skills – skills that enhance performance as well as reduce injury risk – they will say that they are too busy. No coach is fired because he or she has too many players suffer ACL injuries, but plenty are fired for losing too many games.

To make inroads into the ACL epidemic, and to improve the quality of coaching and play in general, we need to raise our expectations of our coaches. At the grassroots, recreation levels, this is difficult because most organizations are thankful to have anyone without a criminal record offer to coach. However, if this is our expectation when finding or recruiting new coaches, what should we expect? Finding coaches is often a difficult process, and volunteering for a youth team can be a thankless task as every parent in the stands suddenly knows more than the coach. However, what can leagues and organizations do to improve the coaching experience? When a league finds a great coach, how can it keep the coach rather than watching him or her leave when his or her daughter or son finish playing in the league? These are the questions that need to be asked.

When a league finds a great coach, why not offer him a position overseeing other coaches? As a volunteer position, he or she may not be able to invest many hours, but why not create a mentor system for experienced and novice coaches?

These questions do not address ACL injuries specifically. However, ACL injuries are a symptom of a larger problem. If we do not raise our expectations of leagues, and leagues fail to nurture and retain good coaches, how can we expect these leagues to implement the available neuromuscular training programs? If we do not address the Peak by Friday mentality first, how do we ensure the adherence to these programs once introduced?

Writing about ACL injuries is a hot-button topic now, so articles attract eyes, and eyes translate to dollars. Writing about coach education or the win-at-all-costs mentality lacks the same hotness. ACL injuries are the acute injury, but the coach education and preparedness is the chronic problem. When a player injures her ACL, the injury sparks new interest and articles. However, there is no event to spark the same interest in general coach training.

If we really want to make a difference, we need to start young. Sport coaches need to look beyond sport-specific skills to the general movement skills that form the foundation of all sports skills. With physical education cuts and a reduction in free, spontaneous play, sport coaches must fill the void and ensure the proper execution and training of these general skills.

Will this help win games? At 7 or 8 years-old, who cares?

These sport coaches need the tools to change their approach, and developing and disseminating these tools fall to the organizations and leagues. I am amazed that leagues do employ a Technical Director or some other position to oversee the quality of the coaching. In Europe, I was the Head Coach of a professional team, but in that capacity, I was also in charge of the underage coaches. We met about philosophy and drills and teaching concepts. I attended practices.

Of course, this was a professional position – I was doing my job. However, why is there no quality control? On TV, I hear advertisements for the Jr. Jazz and their 10,000 players. If you raise the cost of the league $3, you could pay a Technical Director $30,000/year to attend practices, lead clinics, mentor coaches, identify mentor coaches, etc. What if each league gave a Coach of the Year award based not on record, but a professional’s objective evaluation of the coach’s teaching style, feedback, learning environment, etc.?

These ideas appear impossible to implement. Why? The reason that leagues do not implement these ideas is because they derive no benefit. Parents are not choosing leagues based on the coach training that the coaches receive. Parents generally do not know what to look for or what questions to ask. Leagues thrive based on marketing like most businesses. If people thought critically about their beverage choices, would Coke be a thriving international company? No. Instead, we buy the easiest product to find, the one with which we are most familiar, regardless of its effect on our health.

We make the same choices when we choose leagues, teams, etc. Since familiarity trumps effectiveness in our choices, leagues derive no benefit from adding expenditures to improve the league.

Youth sports is a business. Ultimately, parents dictate the business through their choices. Business will chase the dollars. If parents insist on quality coaching, leagues that can demonstrate the quality of their coaching through certifications, mentorships, etc. will derive benefit from these efforts.

What if a league, rather than charging coaches to attend a Saturday clinic or asking them to volunteer more of their time to attend the clinic, paid the coaches to attend or gave the coaches free gear or products to assist with their coaching? Would more coaches be interested in coaching clinics if they were paid to attend or given gifts for attending? Rather than creating another impediment in finding coaches, use the clinics as a reward for volunteering. Change the narrative.

Eventually, when we see some of these changes implemented with recreation leagues, YMCAs, middle school leagues, AAU, NJB, BCI, etc., we will create the environment where the neuromuscular training programs which have been shown to be effective in reducing the incident rate of ACL injuries can have an effect. Before we shift the philosophy or mentality of the coaches and establish long term development and coach preparedness as the expectation not the exception, these neuromuscular training programs will remain sporadic and the injury rate will remain the same.

YBCA tentatively has scheduled a clinic on October 11 at the University of Utah. More information to follow.

 By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

Here are some of the responses:

• A good coach needs to understand the needs of his players, and to use individual strengths in different ways to get the job done. A good coach will make goals with the players that are specific, not just “I want to win”. He will condition them in many different ways, so they’ll be ready for anything. And he will understand the game more than when he simply played it.
• I have met many people like this, where they were pretty good players when they were younger or continued playing but didn’t make it to college ball or the pros and just took up coaching. They think they know everything but there is so much more to coaching then just knowing how to play. A coach should be someone with knowledge, of course, but knowledge of how to teach, instruct, demonstrate, be clear, know how to work with individuals and groups, and so much more. Yelling and screaming may work at certain places but for the most part, yelling doesn’t work like most people would think. Running only made people more frustrating.
• A coach should be someone who takes the players on his/her team and teaches them, not only about how to become a better player, but how to be better off the court. This involves academics, character, and basically any other issues in their lives that they may need help with. Knowing plays and understanding the game thoroughly is a huge part of being a coach. That said, if you do not have good relationships with your players and staff, you will have poor team chemistry and success will be much harder to achieve.
• Yelling, “thats what coaches do.” I love it! This is typical of many coaches who believe they can coach because they played the sport. They do not know how to coach, but are certain they know how. I’m sure we all have had a coach like this. Little is communicated from the coach to the player because of the misinterpretation of the yelling and or “punishment” of running.
• It’s funny because as you watch it you are thinking to yourself that a person would have to be crazy to believe that the things this character says is terrible, but then realize that there are actually coaches who have this mind set.
• The video is classic depiction of some of the coaches i’ve had throughout my sports career. I had a football coach in high school that was exactly this way. He knew the game quite well but did not know how to coach (teach) it to the players.
• Many coaches think that the best way to motivate players is to yell at them. My football coaches liked to yell a lot. It really upset a lot of my teammates. Many of them stopped playing up to their full potential because they didn’t like how they were treated. I think that a good coach motivates their team by building confidence.

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

Here are the slides for the presentation: