Keeping Score & Changing Youth Sports

August 22nd, 2010

More and more, I think we blame the wrong things for the problems evident in youth sports. For instance, everyone blames AAU for everything bad about basketball, yet school teams often employ the same tactics. With young athletes, we often blame keeping score for the issues that arise.

Neil Swidey writes about the issues of keeping score in his article “What happened to losing?” He touches on the real issue briefly: the loss of play for the sake of play.

Until relatively recently, children tended to get the bulk of their athletic exposure in sandlot games where kids handled the organizing, team selection, rules enforcement, and conflict resolution. Now, from a very young age, kids inhabit and compete in an adult-organized world.

I began playing organized basketball in the fourth grade. But the basketball experiences that shaped me much more were the pickup games played on the courts in the center of town. The action there was intense, yet there was never an adult in sight. We kids ran the show. If one team dominated too much, we just naturally switched up teams. We called our own fouls. And, yes, we certainly kept score, but no one had time to obsess over victories and losses. There was always another game just about to begin. (For many kids today, the only regular exposure to this type of environment is video games, and kids don’t seem scarred from losing at Mario Kart on the Wii.)

Now, if the article veered down this path, I would agree. I played on good teams and bad teams in my various youth leagues. However, much of my athletic development occurred during recess games and summer pick-up games near my house. Pick-up games ensure a competitiveness, as losers sit while winners stay on the court. Arguments often ensue, but disagreements are dealt with quickly and forgotten. While sitting for the next game sucks, it certainly is not the end of the world, and few people keep track of their wins and losses in these pick-up games.

However, the article again returns to the subject of keeping score, handing out trophies and more, while acknowledging that adults often are the source of problems in youth sports.

If adults cause the problems, why not address these issues rather than not putting up a scoreboard? Children and parents keep score; everyone knows who won and lost the game, and the absence of a scoreboard prevents very little.

The problem with many teams and leagues is the over-competitiveness of coaches. Because we evaluate coaches based on what we see – games – coaches strive to make their teams look organized and disciplined during games.

Rather than look at those within one league as associates working together to help a group of children in a specific area, we often view the opposing coaches and teams as adversaries.

When I was young, I played for Fair Oaks Little League. Each season, I played for a different team within F.O.L.L: Dodgers, Orioles, Indians, White Sox. We competed against the other teams in our league, but at the end of the season, the top players played together as the F.O.L.L. All-Star Team against other Little Leagues like Citrus Heights, Sunrise, etc. Most of the players within F.O.L.L. eventually fed into Bella Vista High School.

When viewed in this way, the individual teams were not adversaries: when I played for the Dodgers, the Giants, Reds and others were not the enemy. Ultimately, we were playing to elevate each other’s play and prepare the best players for the Tournament of Champions and All-Star Tournaments. From a long term perspective, we were developing to play high school baseball and turn BV into a winning program.

From this perspective, one way to reduce the competitive egos of the coaches is to make teams and coaches work together. Rather than assign one coach to each team, assign a group of coaches to an age group. These coaches become responsible for the development of all the players in the age group, not just the 12 players on their individual team.

In this way, players play to win the game and compete against the other teams. However, the coaches’ goals differ. Rather than run up the score against a lesser opponent, the coach’s goal is to find a way to challenge each team. Maybe that means that he throws his third-string pitcher against a weaker opponent and risks a defeat. Maybe he switches his outfielders into the infield and vice versa to develop his players’ all-around skills. Maybe he works on situational hitting and gives up an out with a sacrifice when his hitter likely would have driven in the run. This also helps the opponent practice different skills, like hitting against a hittable pitcher and fielding bunts among other skills.

To expand the idea, coaches could switch between teams for practices. In a similar basketball league, what if one coach is an expert at teaching man2man defensive principles while another is an expert shooting instructor? In a traditional league, the 8-12 players on the defensive coach’s team benefit from his defensive instruction, while the 8-12 players on the shooting coach’s team benefit from his shooting instruction. But, in a true developmental league, why not allow the coaches to work together? The defensive coach could run a practice for the two teams focused on defensive principles, while the shooting coach could take a practice and focus on shooting. This way, the players benefit from the best of all the coaches, and the coaches lose a little of the ego involvement because they want to see all the players develop the skill set that they are teaching, rather than focusing only on one team and proving his worth as a coach through their win-loss record.

Back to the article, Swidley makes an important point about cuts with youth teams:

Cutting kids from teams when they’re still in elementary school — or even middle school — simply makes no sense. Truth is, the predictive powers of even experienced coaches to survey a bunch of 10-year-olds and spot the future Division I college stars are about as reliable as a 90-day weather forecast. Athletic prowess at 10 or 11 is largely a function of physical maturity. Getting cut at an early age is no good for the kids who don’t make the roster, yet might otherwise have blossomed. But it’s also no good for the young anointed superstars who get tracked into early specialization of one sport, increasing their chance of burnout. By age 13, some 70 percent of kids have dropped out of youth sports. And imagine how crushing it is for the third-grader dubbed the next Mia Hamm who, after other kids catch up in physical maturity, isn’t even able to make her high school varsity team.

Before high school, all leagues are developmental: the primary focus is fun, learning and improvement. If we believe these are the goals, why cut players? I laugh when I see advertisements for developmental teams seeking 5′10 centers for their u11 team. If you are recruiting certain types of players and cutting others, how is your team developmental?

If we can find ways to include more players; create more unstructured environments for players to play for the sake of playing; and remove the coach’s ego from youth leagues, we will create a better experience for all players and make the experience more enjoyable for coaches who can work with their peers and learn from each other rather than viewing everyone as a competitor or adversary.

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

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Basketball Coaches Solving the Marshmallow Problem

June 5th, 2010

In this TED talk, Tom Wujec discusses the Marshmallow Problem:

For coaches, I see two important lessons.

First, The Ta-Da Problem. Many coaches use a similar process as the groups that perform poorly. They orient, plan and build, but when they put the marshmallow on top at the very end, everything falls apart.

This happens when coaches and teams spend too much time planning and practicing 5v0 offense or defense. While waiting for a game last week, I watched a youth practice. The girls looked to be about 10 years old. The team spent nearly a half-hour working on 5v0 offense: screen down, screen away.

As they ran through the offense, the players predictably set screens on the wrong side of their teammate (the outside of the player on the block, rather than the inside where a defender should be playing). The screener and cutter often ran past each other rather than actually setting and using the screen. Also, without a defender present, the offense never read the defense and used the screen accordingly; instead, the offense ran from spot to spot.

Of course, in this scenario, the defense is the marshmallow. After 30 minutes of 5v0 offense, the coaches hurriedly added defense for the final few minutes of practice and the offense looked nothing like that which they had just practiced. The game changed completely. Players did not follow the pattern and when they did, they were not open because they did not wait for their screens or read the defense when making their cuts. In effect, the 30 minutes of practice was completely useless in terms of transfer to a 5v5 setting.

The kindergartners in the video would practice 5v5 throughout practice. They might introduce the idea of the screen quickly without defense, but then add defenders. They would struggle, presumably, so the coach would add another piece of instruction or maybe simplify the game. The players would try again. Just as the kindergartners spend their time building prototype after prototype, a more successful approach to developing a team offense with young players is to play against defenders in small-sided games or 5v5 scrimmages.

At this age, players are not going to memorize plays and run them perfectly against defenders in the game without considerable practice against defenders. Moving quickly to 5v5 before players perfectly memorize the plays in a 5v0 seems like a poor approach, just like building a spaghetti structure without first designing a plan. However, just as the trial and error approach works better for the kindergartners, players need to learn to adjust and adapt to mistakes during games, as their execution against defenders will never be perfect.

The second lesson for coaches is the influence of the executive admin with the CEOs. We tend to think of coaches as CEOs. However, in this video, coaches need to be more like the executive admins. The executive admin “have special skills of facilitation” and they “manage the process.” A coach needs the special skills of facilitation to work with his or her players and to bring out their best performances. In a sense, he or she manages this process. While CEOs tend to set forth their expectations and demonstrate their power, the executive admins work to make things work.

As a coach, we are bestowed a position of power. There is no need to prove this position to anyone. Instead, our objective is to assist players in their development and performance. We need to facilitate this development through physical, cognitive, social and psychological pathways.

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

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Finishing the Season: Three Approaches to Late-Season Practices

March 13th, 2010

The March 8, 2010 ESPN the Magazine has an article titled “Too Much of a Good Thing” about the Texas Longhorns. In the article, Elena Bergeron compares Rick Barnes’ mid-season strategy to that of some other coaches.

“We think the human body can take only three high-level, hard workouts a week,” Barnes says. In the middle of the Big 12 season, with two or three games a week on the schedule, that means less mandatory practice time and more walk-throughs and shoot-arounds. “There are times during the year when we’re going to be on the floor for more than two hours; other times, for an hour or less.”

Barnes relies heavily on one of the top strength & conditioning coaches in the country – Todd Wright – and numerous graduate students who do research on topics related to basketball and performance enhancement. Few other teams follow this methodology. However, what is most important late in the season – the extra time on the court practicing or having healthy, fresh players? Sometimes, less really is more.

Other coaches are not following Barnes’ methodology:

“Shorthanded Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey, who has a seven-man rotation, started two-a-day workouts in February to toughen his squad for a late Big East push. And Villanova’s Jay Wright, who runs an 11-man rotation, says his team is scrimmaging more at this point in the season than in previous years, to give everyone a regular run. Sometimes starters get the day off so Wright can work out his rotational players two-on-two. ‘This season we’re much more concerned with guys who play 10 to 15 minutes and making sure they’re always involved,’ Wright says.”

At the end of my season, I scrimmaged more than ever, as I played 12 players and wanted to keep players in game shape, as most players played less than a half during games. In previous seasons, as the season neared a conclusion, my goal was not to continue teaching new things, but to keep the players fresh and focused for the late-season games.

Different situations require different approaches, and different coaches approach the same situations with a different set of eyes.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Identifying Age or Potential

March 4th, 2010

Originally published by Los Angeles Sports & Fitness, January/February 2009.

My first organized sport was soccer. In kindergarten, I joined a soccer club sponsored by my church. My teammates were mostly 1st graders. With a late September birthday, I started school late, so I was older for my class. However, youth soccer had a January 1 cut-off date, so I played with the children in the grade ahead of me.

I felt that I had an advantage playing with the older kids. I played on a good team and was an average player. Initially, I played the midfield, usually on the right side, but I fought to play as a central midfielder. I liked to control the action and cover the whole field as I could run all day.

Ken, a friend in my class, played competitive/club soccer. He tried out and made the big club team in our area and traveled to tournaments throughout the west coast. At school, our soccer skills and athleticism were even. However, he had a February birthday, so while I played in the u-12s, he made an under-10 team. We were even at recess, but our competition away from school differed because of our birthdays.

When Ken joined the competitive team, we were basically equal. However, after several years of competitive soccer, he was a better player. While I played soccer from August – November, he played year-round, and he played against better competition. He had soccer coaches, while we had parent volunteers coaching our team.

When we got to high school, Ken made the high school team while I did not try-out – the best player from my team did not make the high school team during the previous year, so I did not think that I had a chance. Every player who made the high school team played competitive youth soccer, except the back-up goalie who looked around on the first day of try-outs, decided he was not good enough as a field player and tried out as the only goalie in the freshmen class.

As one of the oldest kids in my class, I had the advantage of age and physical maturity during elementary school. In basketball, a sport which I played with school teams, I was one of the taller players, so I had an advantage. However, in soccer, I was on the wrong side, as I played on teams with kids who were eight or nine months older, so I was an average player, not a candidate for a club/competitive team.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell cites a study by a Canadian psychologist which found that “in any elite group of Canadian hockey players, 40 percent of the players will have been born in January, February and March.” Canada uses a January 1 cut-off date for junior hockey. Coaches identify talent at young ages and shepherd the talented players onto the elite teams.

When coaches looked at me playing with my soccer team, I did not stand out. My friend, however, was bigger, faster and stronger than most of the kids that he played against. Even though our recess games were even, his size and speed helped him make a competitive team. The coach did not identify talent, but the advantages of birth. With a February birth date, he was older than most of the other players who tried out, and at 10-years-old, a five to six month age advantage can be a big deal. When coaches choose the select or all-star teams, “they are more likely to view as talented the bigger and more coordinated players who have the benefit of critical extra months of maturity,” (Gladwell).

Even on my recreation team, the best players had birthdays in January and February. The better players also played forward, goalie and sweeper. The worst players played outside fullback or outside midfield. This happens in every sport: the best baseball players pitch and play shortstop, while the worst plays right field; in basketball, the best player plays point guard and the worst player plays post. Unfortunately, when coaches distinguish the best and the worst, they distinguish the older and the more coordinated, not the most talented or those with the most potential.

In the beginning, the differences are small. Ken and I were similar as 10 and 11-year-olds. On my team, the forwards were basically the same as the midfielders and fullbacks; they were a little faster and a little bigger. However, as the inherent age advantages decreased, the differences on the pitch were more pronounced. Barnsley [the Canadian psychologist] argues that these kinds of skewed age distributions exist whenever three things happen: selection, streaming and differentiated experience.

If you make a decision about who is good and who is not good at an early age; if you separate the “talented” from the “untalented;” and if you provide the “talented” with superior experience, then you’re going to end up giving a huge advantage to the small group of people born closest to the cut-off date (Gladwell).

Because Ken made the competitive team, he had access to better coaching, more practice and better competition. Over several years, these advantages helped him develop his skills far more than I did with my recreational team. Even though I was older,  his competitive experience gave him a greater advantage.

We have a poor understanding of the road to success or excellence, and without a better understanding, our ability to evaluate and identify talent diminishes. When ranking players, choosing teams or identifying prospects, we need to look deeper than size, speed and strength, as those characteristics tend to balance as players continue to develop and all the players go through puberty. What we see as talent at an early age is often not talent, but age. Rather than choose and develop the older players, we need a system by which we identify true talents or we need to wait to identify “talent” and differentiate training until the advantages of maturity disappear.

When we identify talent at an early age and then provide the talented with a better training experience, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which sociologist Robert Merton defines as a situation where “a false definition, in the beginning…evokes a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true.” At 10-years-old, Ken was not more talented. By making the team and going through years of better training, he became a better player. Rather than credit the different experience which developed him into a better player, we credit his natural talent.

Because I was an average soccer player, but a pretty good basketball player, I spent more time playing and practicing my basketball skills, while Ken trained for soccer. I chose the sport where I had an age advantage, while he chose the sport where he had the age advantage. Neither of us made a conscious choice to pursue an activity where we were given a slight advantage; instead, we gravitated to the sports where we found early success, even though we played both sports until high school.

As a society, we believe that if you have ability, the vast network of scouts and talent spotters will find you, and if you are willing to work to develop that ability, the system will reward you (Gladwell). However, as Barnsley’s study illustrates, those born in the last half of the year have all been discouraged, or overlooked, or pushed out of the sport. The talent of essentially half of the athletic population has been squandered (Gladwell).

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Oklahoma City Playing Fundamental Basketball

February 11th, 2010

Try to guard him by Lorianne DiSabato.

Oklahoma City is 3rd in team defense at the All-Star break, and assistant coach Ron Adams gets much of the credit.

“We don’t really change what we do,” explained Nick Collison. “I’ve been on a lot of teams where game to game we try to change how we’re going to guard the pick-and-roll, whether we’re going to rotate to a certain guy. We do the same thing, but we really work at it. I think a lot of teams try to win with Xs and Os instead getting good at what they do. We do fundamentals all the time - closeouts, for example. It’s almost like basketball camp. I think with a young team that’s a good way to go. We’ve been real solid.”

During my season, I tried to get my team to do a couple things well. We did not adjust to our opponents, scout or change things. We played teams who could not dribble with their eyes up, yet their coach was calling out multiple plays and switching defenses several times. We would beat these teams by 40 points while playing 12 players fairly even minutes. We did not try to win through X’s and O’s, but by being smart and improving each day on basics like passing and catching, lay-ups and containing the dribble. I was amazed that teams would spend 25 minutes in the locker room before games and 10 minutes at half time talking. We never went to the locker room the entire season, and only once did I talk for more than five minutes at half-time. For me, pre-game and half-time was more practice time to work on shooting, passing and lay-ups.

For OKC, Adams runs the defensive portion for head coach Scott Brooks.

“His segment in practice is defense,” added Kevin Durant. “We go over the same things over and over again. It might get boring to us sometimes as players, wanting to do something new, but I think it’s helping us. We want to be perfect at it, even though that’s not possible, and have it become second nature.”

Sometimes the process of improvement becomes repetitive. For players who want to be players and want to improve, they maintain concentration toward the ultimate goal. For more recreational players who simply want to play, the repetitiveness gets frustrating because they do not value the improvement as much as the fun.

On my team, I had a mix of the two. I probably did no more than 12-15 different drills all season. I am not big into variety, and I do not want to waste time explaining the drill’s proper execution.  I eliminate most of the typical drills like three-man weaves and zig-zag drills, and nearly every drill is competitive, some form of small-sided scrimmage. This maintains the concentration of the recreational players, as the game is fun, and the more developmental players, as they improve. However, during those times when I felt compelled to concentrate on one specific thing with a block practice drill, the attention of the recreational players quickly waned. I had to switch groups some times to put a more serious player with a less serious player to keep the recreational player’s concentration. On other occasions, I did not switch the groups and allowed the developmental players to work together and work hard and the recreational players to work together and be more social at a basket away from the harder working players so they were not a distraction.

In this way, it is a matter of adjusting to the varying interests of your team’s players. However, even at the NBA level, successful teams keep the system simple and focus on fundamentals first to raise their level of performance. Before concentrating on your strategy, make sure the players have the basic tools and fundamentals to make use of the X’s and O’s.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Real Life Costs of Bad Coaching/Teaching

January 10th, 2010

When we speak about good and bad coaches, we generally speak in terms of their competitive performance and ability to develop and maximize their players’ talents. Even at youth levels, we criticize a coach’s zone offense or timeout usage.

In the overall scheme, these competitive flaws (or strengths) are a small piece of a coach’s overall effectiveness. At its foundation, youth sports are an opportunity to motivate and inspire young people into a life of fitness by teaching them how to use their bodies and by giving them confidence to participate in group games.

On the other hand, a poor coach in this respect can lead a young person into a sedentary life.

Billy Strean, a professor in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, says a negative lifelong attitude towards physical activity can be determined by either a good or a bad experience, based on the personal characteristics of the coach or instructor. For example, negative experiences may come from a teacher who has low energy, is unfair and/or someone who embarrasses students.

Youth coaches have a far greater impact on their athletes than most believe, which is why we need to help, guide and nurture those great youth coaches so they continue to make an impact on youth athletes and youth sports. Athletes develop their practice habits, learn their skills and develop a passion for sports during these years (or not). If we want to inspire young people into a life of fitness, and develop more complete players for longer competitive participation, we need more emphasis on educating, assisting and empowering youth coaches.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Motivating your Bench Players

October 10th, 2009

One tough issue for coaches is utilizing bench players. These players play several pivotal roles:

  • Often, these players form the nucleus of the program’s future, whether they are underclassmen or rookies on a professional team;
  • If a player is injured, someone must step in and step up to maintain the current level of success;
  • Non-starters must challenge the starters in practice to keep the starters (and key reserves) sharp throughout the season.

During my rookie season as a head coach, I had seven solid players, but players 8-10 were unproven. Like many teams, players 8-10 were the youngest players.

Player 8 was a rookie reserve point guard who was more of a shooting guard. Player 9 was 19-years-old and in her fourth year with the team, though she played a total of 36 minutes in the previous season. Player 10 was 17-years-old and in her second year, though she played a total of 32 minutes during the previous season.

The team was somewhere between going for one last play-off run with its core (though we were picked last in the pre-season) and needing a youth movement to build for the future.

Without a guaranteed contract, I needed to win, but I needed to develop the players on the end of the bench, as our 37-year-old starting PG and 41-year-old back-up center planned on retiring sooner, rather than later.

bench 2Unfortunately, at the outset of the season, players 8-10 were in no position, talent-wise to help us, and in some cases, provided mere fodder for our starters in practice. However, I knew our lanky 17-year-old could  be important, as she had the athleticism and length we lacked on the perimeter. I also believed that the neglected 19-year old could help us if she gained confidence, which was hard to come by for a player who had not played a meaningful minute since she was 14. The back-up PG abruptly left the team after four games despite playing her best game because of a contract dispute with management.

At the outset, the young players were excited for a change of coaches, and the potential to play, but their hopes were dashed early in the pre-season. I  was close to losing one, if not both, so I confronted the players.

First, I explained that I generally stick to an eight-man rotation so they needed to be in the top eight to see considerable playing time. However, I said that the rotation could and would fluctuate as the season progressed. I challenged them to be better than the seventh man, and to guard someone ahead of them and not each other during practice. I set goals for each player that were realistic and backed with promises of playing time.

The 17-year-old needed to show that she could be a lock-down defender, which I knew she could be. However, she needed to be effective enough offensively that I could play her without fearing that she would commit a turnover when she touched the ball. This meant playing on better balance, learning to use a jump stop and simply squaring to the basket every time she caught the ball. She never even had to shoot or score to earn minutes, though the more she could offer offensively, the more her playing time would increase. Instead, I gave her a role (defensive stopper) and the motivation to improve to see tangible results (playing time).

Consequently, she showed up at every guard workout that I did with the club’s men’s team to work on her ball handling. She improved and earned playing time, and probably defended the league’s top point guard better than anyone in the league because she matched her length and quickness.

As her confidence and playing time increased due to her defense, her offensive skills improved. She accepted her role and worked on her own to improve her deficiencies, as she understood that would lead to more playing time.

Second, I gave the players a role during games. A popular coaches’ mantra is “A loss is only a loss if you fail to learn from it.” The same goes for a lack of playing time. A player can sulk on the bench or  use the time to prepare for an opportunity to play.

benchI challenged them to watch the players and scout. They assisted our players  by pointing out opponent’s offensive tendencies or an opportunity to be more effective offensively. This kept the players mentally in the game, in case they played, and increased their basketball IQ, as they learned to see the game better, which ultimately helped them when they earned their playing time. In this way, the lack of playing time was not a loss, just a setback from which they learned.

Ultimately, the success of a team in a game or season depends upon play from the bench. At some point, the bench must step up for an injured player or a player in foul trouble. The quality of depth on the bench is pivotal to keep the starters fresh during tight games and throughout the season.

Bench players must be mentally into the game, be made to feel a part of the team, remain motivated and be given attainable goals for which to strive. Every player has a role and in order to have a happy, successful team, players must embrace their roles and feel that they contribute to the team’s overall success.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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