YBCA

Over this summer my organization had its annual camp. As against last years camp were we placed players in age groups and developed them this year we challenged ourselves more. What we did was at the beginning of the camp we did what we called the camp hospital were we  first grouped players according to their age groups then after we used certain block drills to determine the skill levels of each player. The main focus of the coaches during this diagnosis session was the technique the players used in executing the various technical skills. It worked closed to perfect as at the end of the diagnosis test we were able to group players accordingly based on their skill levels. Some observations were; the longer and more a player played the game the better the chances of the player having an averagely good technique. This was very evident during our diagnosis, as i realised that those who had not played the game before or had played for less than 5months were very deficient of skills which resulted in horrible technique, whiles those with like a year of playing experience had a medium skill level and an fair techique, those who had played consistently and competitively had a higher skill level with less faults in their technique unless those who had never forcused on cordination during their early learning stages.What made me know that the skill specific works pretty much better than the age specific was comparing this 2010 camp tournament to the 2009 camp tournament. This year the camp games and tournament was a delight to watch, as you saw players committing less fouls, and focusing more on the fundamentals, and their technique as against the outcome. This resulted in great outcomes such as good individual finishes, decision making and great team awareness. Last year was so unlike this year, even though last year the players played scrimmage games at the end of each day there was not little to no improvements during the games asides the intensity of the games. But this year with players going through four days of technical and tactical skills training with no scrimmage games players implemented more of the skills taught during the tournament.Many of my thoughts on whether to choose skills or age were answered after reading the Canadian Basketball Long Term Athlete Development programme. With my little experience with developing and training basketball players i realised at age should be considered after skills. At the camp i had one guy who loved the game and wanted to come be a part of the camp even though he was wey above the age limit, he was 25 and had a pretty good height of 6'5. After he told us how far he had travelled to attend the camp we decided to let him in on the action as the game in Ghana needed more lovers than haters. It was after the skills diagnostic test that we realised that he had never played the game. After explaining to him he was glad to learn the game from beginning with the beginners group which was made up of kids between 11 – 14yrs. He had a great time and showed great improvement during the tournament.

This is my view, i would love to read the views of others on choosing skills or age or both when developing young players. 

Social ,Psychological and physical factors surel y should be considered. Wheat we did at the camp to psychologically prepare the kids what we had a brief orientation as to the importance of breaking them up according to skill level. Even after that i had one young girl who happened to be in the beginners group approaching me to ask me ” does it mean does of us in the beginners group are not good enough” . I sat with her for like 10extra minutes and spoke to her on some benefits of been placed in the beginners group, and surprisenly she left with smiles and showed it at the end of the camp when she made an 28 feet shot over a 6'2 boy to win the tournament for her team and after she also picked the best offensive player for her group. She was very much very excited and appreciative of the camp structure and is now looking to learn the game more.

So i guess before placing players into skill level groups they should be spoken to on the importance and benefits over just been placed according to age, and this will help to psychologically prepare them. To even motivate them to want to follow.