I am thinking about using Blitz this season with a youth basketball team.  Do you have any suggestions on how to implement the offense or defense?

The parents and their coach schemed together to keep the best players together on one team in order to beat the other teams and win the championship trophy. While this may be extreme, this is how adults view competitiveness: we do whatever necessary to give ourselves a competitive advantage.

Children are different. Throughout the summer, I noticed a trend. In any game like tag when one player had to choose another play to try and get, nearly every single player picked someone of comparable talent. In two weeks of camps with nearly 200 players, I almost never saw a talented player go after a weaker player.

Players chose who to go after based on two observable factors:

• Talent level
• Social group

Boys generally went after boys and girls generally went after girls unless one went after someone from his or her social circle or someone more talented. Lower skilled boys might go after a girl if they spent time at lunch or walked to camp together, while a girl may choose to go after a boy if the girls were below her skill level and she needed a challenge.

Players did not seek the same competitive advantage as parents. When left to make decisions on their own, they picked the just right challenge: an opponent who was similar or slightly better than themselves.

More to the point, when a player struggled, he or she did not take the easy out and go after a lesser player. Instead, he or she showed dogged determination to get the comparable player. Even when I tried to influence a player to go after someone one step below his or her level because the game was starting to drag on as everyone waited for him or her to tag someone, players almost never relented. Even when they chose a new opponent, they did not go for the easiest option, but one slightly easier than the original opponent.

While parents and coaches are concerned with winning and losing because they believe that children may lose interest if they lose too much, children are more interested in the social activity of playing, the challenge and the fairness of the activity.

Maybe youth leagues should allow the players to pick the teams, not the parents and coaches!

By Brian McCormick Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League ]]> Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:37:28 -0700 http://learntocoachbasketball.com/main-menu/forum/level-i-certification-course/ybca-level-ii-on-court-clinic/#p325 Level I Certification Course http://learntocoachbasketball.com/main-menu/forum/level-i-certification-course/ybca-level-ii-on-court-clinic/#p325 I would be interested in attending.

Weekly Practice Structure

Monday

·        Light session

·        90 min.

·        Lifting and extra shooting after practice

Tuesday

·        Heavy session

·        120 min.

Wednesday

·        Light session

·        90 min.

Thursday

·        Light session

·        90 min.

·        Lifting and extra shooting

Friday

·        Heavy session

·        120 min.

Strength training set-up

Monday

·        Bench pressà5 / 3 / 1

·        AuxiliariesàChins and GH’s

Thursday

·        Deadliftà5 / 3 / 1

AuxiliariesàDB bench variation / Rows / RDL’s

Monday

• Incline bench press-5/3/1 sets and reps
• Glute-hams
• Chins
• Hard conditioning on the court

Tuesday

• Low intensity conditioning

Wednesday

• Deadlift-5/3/1 sets and reps
• Wtd. chins
• Upper body vertical push
• Hard conditioning on the court

Thursday

• Low intensity conditioning

In most cases, this is the type of periodization missing from today’s youth basketball. Players move from competitive season to competitive season with brief training camps to learn the new team’s plays, but fail to take an off-season to focus on recovering from the competitive cycle and improving general skills.

If a professional and world champion needs this time to recover and to improve his general skills, don’t young athletes need the same type of periodized schedule and time away from the constant competition?

Sporting News recently rated the NFL coaches and asked a player to comment on his coach and his position in the rankings. What types of characteristics and qualities do NFL players like about their coaches and associate with their coach's success?

• Tom Brady about Bill Belichick: "In terms of his work ethic and his preparation, he’s as diligent as he’s ever been.”
• Drew Brees about Sean Peyton: "I would say, more than anything, the way that Sean Payton is able to complement and combine that very disciplined, fair but stern attitude, with, ‘Hey, we’re going to have fun, and we’re going to enjoy what we do,’ (is what makes him a great coach).”
• Vincent Fuller about Jeff Fisher: "He is the longest-tenured coach, so he has the respect there. And he takes care of his players.
• London Fletcher on Mike Shanahan: "He’s a proven winner. His approach to the game, the way he handles this team, is great. … He treats us like men .”
• James Farrior on Mike Tomlin: "His first year, he was a little hard on us, but he learned from that and the next year he changed a couple things and we were very successful. ”
• Jim Leonard on Rex Ryan: "Look at the X’s and O’s. He’s as good a coach as there is in this league.”

A few interesting points:

First, as the list continued, comments moved further from personality traits or qualities and concentrated more on wins as evidence of one's coaching ability. This easily could say more about the player than the coach, but the players speaking about the coaches at the top of the list were more effusive with their praise of the coach's process, not just their results.

Second, the bolded adjectives give an idea of the traits and qualities one needs to be successful as a coach at any level:

• work ethic
• preparation
• diligence
• diciplined
• fair
• stern
• fun environment
• enjoy what we do
• respect
• takes care of players
• treats us like men
• changed approach (flexibility)
• X's and O's (knowledge)

1. Successful coaches show players respect and earn their players' trust.
2. Successful coaches are prepared and demonstrate the same work ethic toward their craft as they expect of their players.
3. Successful coaches are fair toward all players, though they do not necessarily treat all players the same.
4. Successful coaches create an environment where players want to be there, and they enjoy the hard work.
5. Successful coaches know the game.
6. Successful coaches are not afraid to admit mistakes and make changes when necessary.

The problem is these students study so much and work so hard, but they don't really know anything but facts and dates. They can't synthesize information or draw conclusions between disparate items. They are like mini-computers programmed by google to search for random facts in the recesses of their brains, but they can't articulate what it means outside of the singular context where they learned it (like learning to run the Flex and failing to transfer reading the screen to other situations outside the Flex) or apply the learning. 

“According to a study in January’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, teens who skate or Rollerblade more than four times per week are half as likely to become obese as inactive peers and twice as likely to remain at a healthy weight as teens who play team sports. ‘Noncompetitive sports are the ones people tend to continue to participate in,’ says John Hopkins professor Robert W. Blum,” (Angel).

I also wrote this article (http://www.podiumsportsjournal.....th-sports/) which includes this statement:

Sports like skateboarding are on the rise because they lack adult interference. Children learn by watching other skaters and trying tricks on their own, and they enjoy the experience. Skaters help fellow skaters; it is a collaborative sport rather than a competitive sport.

When I watched the X-Games, Bob Burnquist said that the competition was not about winning, but pushing the limits of what people think possible or what their bodies can do. That is a true sporting pursuit and the reason that most people play sports and compete. We like challenges, we like learning and we like pushing ourselves to see what we are capable of doing.

I also agree that there is no reason to cut young athletes. Sometimes the cost is inevitable, as it is expensive to run a basketball league, with officials, gym fees, insurance, etc. Part of the impetus for the Playmakers Basketball Development League was to create a league that eliminated the biggest expense (typically officials) to support coaches and their programs or to reduce the total cost. 

As I argued previously, you can play basketball without officials and even without coaches. The money in a league should go into things that directly benefit the participants. Most parents, coaches and players leave a game complaining about the officials anyway, and the officials are the highest paid participant. Would they complain any more without officials if they called their own fouls? 

The Organization Kid
The young men and women of America's future elite work their laptops to the bone, rarely question authority, and happily accept their positions at the top of the heap as part of the natural order of life
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag.....-kid/2164/

I've read both the books you reference ("Shopclass" and "Zen"), and the line by Pirsig ("They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easy-going – and uninvolved. They were like spectators. ") nicely sums up how little we ask of people. The role of a coach, in many ways, is to get more out of people.

Anyway, the Brooks article expands on a lot of what these two authors are talking about. As an educator, I tihnk you'd like it.

--Pat

• Dynamic warm-up
• Fotowork-soccer drills
• Reaction drills
• Speed-17's
• Wtd push-up 3xmax
• Snatch grip deadlift work up to 5 rep max
• BW inverted rows 4xmax
• Condition-tire flips for time

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 ]]> Sun, 22 Aug 2010 13:20:24 -0700