Wind sprint the living crap out of them!!!!! 3 man weaves, unlike BMR I would play zones simplier for them to understand! 2-3, 3-2 should be good enough.Shoot layups and if they miss one 25 laps...free throws also.Make sure the keep their heads up when dribbling.Young kids love to dribble too much...literally show them it is much faster to move the ball down court by passing it than dribbling it.Take time to show them their mistakes, after all a coach is a teacher not only in the game but in growing up and interacting with others. Last but not least have fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good Luck

_________________
I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.

You ready for your first game FF?

Last night at my daughters 5th and 6th grade practice we had to share gym time with a boys 6th grade team. Their coach asked if we wanted to scrimmage some towards the end of practice. I know the guy who coaches this team somewhat, but I did not realize how ignorant he was when it comes to basketball. As we are scrimmaging he just did some really stupid things. We had a girl that got fouled shooting so we went through lining up properly for the free throws and all. The girl takes her first shot and air balls it. He grabs the ball and tells his team to take it out of bounce. And I literally had to explain to him that she got another shot. He thought if you air balled the first shot you did not get a 2nd shot. And the guy tried to do the same thing to one of his own players later in the scrimmage.

Then we started playing a 2-3 zone defense and he says he needs time to set up an offense for zone. So we take a time out. When we come back out he has them running this really strange dribble weave thing. They would dribble to the wing and hand off to the wing and the wing would try to dribble into the middle. When there was no space in the middle they would back it out and dribble it to the other wing and keep it up. As we were standing watching he couldn't understand why a dribble weave offense wouldn't work against a zone.

So at the end of the night our 5th and 6th grade girls played a 6th grade boys team to basically a draw. A 6th grade boys team should absolutely hammer a 5th and 6th grade girls team. That poor team is going to get destroyed when they start playing next week. I felt bad for the boys.

_________________
"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

RFDC,
OK,so the guy sucks BUT at least he volunteered to give up his personal time to coach. I admire anyone who tries because a lot of parents could care less or have better things to do.

_________________
favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

That is true Jimmy, no doubt about it.

You would need to know this guy a little to understand why I was laughing. He is pretty cocky about things. So it was kinda humorous to see how little he really knew.

_________________
"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

We just had the first game. Really strange game and really low scoring. It's four 7 minute quarters and we lost 16-9. We were winning 6-4 at halftime. The team kept trying to play one on one and turned the ball over a lot. A lot of dribbling with their heads down that I thought they had improved on by now. Overall I didn't expect it to be that low scoring but there was a lot of really close misses on both sides and both teams struggled to get open at all. There's a lot to work on next practice.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

No ball practice!

Suicides all day!

No Babies Allowed to close practice!

_________________

I had some great experiences coaching both youth Basketball and Baseball. I coached house leagues (as you are involved with) and then Travelling teams later on. Real different experiences. The house leagues will always leave you with a couple exceptionally good kids (if you draft well anyway) as well as a couple really bad ones. The most important thing is to make the most of the time you practice. That means incorporating drills that involve players passing, then moving after passing the ball (getting used to moving without the ball is huge, as most players tend to just stand still after giving up the ball) then getting the ball back on a pass and shooting, while the guy making the 2nd pass crashes the board for a possible put-back (again, stressing moving after making a pass). A 1-3-1 trapping defense is easy to teach and creates a lot of turnovers if taught right. I would suggest contacting the School district as well, if you are interested in getting a gym for an additional night to practice during the weeek. I got a gym in Elmhurst through the school district and had to pay just 35.00 an hour for the gym time, as long as it was on a night/time that janitors would normally be in the building. I got it from 7-8pm and often the janitors let us stay well after 8:00. The extra practice made a world of difference. For your lay-up problem, get a ladder before practice and place an X with masking tape (Blue-so it shows up better) on a spot about 80% of the way up on the side of each side of the box on the backboard that they can use as a target for their lay-up. I liked to have them shoot from both sides of the basket and learn to make lay-ups with either hand, but most kids are awful with their off hand and just getting them to make a lay-up from either side of the basket is pretty good. I saw a previous post mentioning having kids dribble with their heads up. Thats huge. I did lots of drills where kids had to dribble through cones and then I would send another kid from a sideline at some point in the drill that the kid dribbling should immediately spot and pass the ball to. If his head was down, he wouldn't notice him very quickly, and he had to run 1 set of killers (to the free throw line, center court. 2nd free throw line and end line). Also, have kids do basic dribbling from 1 end of the court to the other using only their off hand. Good coaches will teach their kids to force the dribbler to their off hand side (or have it stolen from them) and having the ability to dribble with both hands is big.

_________________
Go Cubs!!!!

Sounds pretty normal for a first game at that age. Getting the game experience is huge. You will see a marked improvement in your next couple games. You just cannot recreate the game experience in practice.

My 5th and 6th grade girls team had their first game today as well. I was worried all morning that we would get blown out. We have a couple girls that have never played before and 2 of our better players are pretty short. But we came out and played really well and won the game 20-19. We went back and forth the whole game. We would get up by 3 and then they would come back and get up by 2 or 3.

Pretty proud of my daughter as with about a minute to go in the game she swished two free throws to put us up by 3 pts. They scored to cut the game to 1 pt with about 30 secs left. They put a full court press on us and we turned it over and gave them the ball under their own basket with about 19 secs left. We packed in the lane in a 2-3 zone and was going to try and force them to shoot it outside. They managed to get 2 shots off in the last few secs but missed them both and we got the ball and were able to run out the clock.

Loads of fun and it was get to see the expression on the girls face when they realized they had won the game.

_________________
"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

That seems like a terribly low score for that age group.

_________________

I thought so too. I wanted to throw a chair.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

3 on 2 drills help a lot with these problems. There is always someone open, as long as they keep their head up to see where the open guy is, once a defender comes up and commits to stopping the ball handler. Plus, you can use these drills to stress the idea of continuing to move towards the basket after making an initial pass, with the idea they may end up getting an easy basket by doing so.

_________________
Go Cubs!!!!

don't listen to elmhurst steve.... most kids are numbnuts. you need to take this beyond empirical means of improving their skills and get to the fire and pashin behind it all.

i had a youth basketball coach who once determined that "we're not gonna take it" by twisted sister was our "theme song" --- literally, during our initial walkthrough @ his house and practices, he had a 60min tape with nothing but "we're not gonna take it" on it and he played it nonstop as we practiced.

i don't remember how we did that year, but rest assured, we didn't take it. and i'm as much as an expert as anyone on here, as one year one of my youth basketball teams made it to the finals versus THE LEGENDARY RUSS MICHNA (future chicago rush immortal). russ was bigger faster and stronger than everyone on our team (and his dad coached his team, so basically every play was "give the ball to russ and get the fuck out of the way" -- he'd score like ~35-40/50 points for his team game-in game-out), but we managed to keep it within ~2-4 points down the stretch... until our coach's son, ken, stood on the other side of half court with his arms crossed and russ michna literally lowered his head, aimed at him, and charged right through him. the foul was called on ken. the resulting free throws put them up 4 with like ~10 seconds left. we lost. russ won, as he often does, because he's russ michna and i'm.... here.

so the point is don't overload these kids with thoughts. that never works well. the guy who was clever enough to fuck a woman to beget a russ michna is gonna win the league anyways.

_________________

_________________
"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

See you in a week.

One of the rules of becoming an executive chef is to not blame your ingredients.

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The sign of a good coach, is not necessarily how many games you win, but how much your kids improve during the season. Other coaches may have done a better job drafting their teams. Perhaps they had outstanding players assigned to their team because their Dads were the coaches too. But if you do a great job of coaching, the dramatic improvements will come and you will see the team transformed by seasons end.

_________________
Go Cubs!!!!

HC in my league used the asst coach BS to get the best player without drafting him. I had mine.

_________________
favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

Thats not uncommon. Again, the best record may not be the result of the greatest coaching job, but having the best initial collection of talent. But a good coach can dramatically improve his players and sometimes overcome such advantages. Often the disparity of talent may be too great. But one may derive the great satisfaction of seeing his/her team develop greatly, if not win league Championships that really don't matter as much in the end. Sending a kid on with the ability to dribble and make a lay-up consistently with either hand, can mean a lot more than some plastic and metal, dust attracting shelf ornament.

_________________
Go Cubs!!!!

Regardless of the age, it's important to teach them several key lessons.

1. When the coach is talking, you have to listen - they do the same in school - why not at practice?
2. Teach them hustle.
3. Stress the importance of conditioning. Whether it's baseball, basketball, they need to have some level of physical fitness
4. Have a standard warmup that the kids can run after the first few times - make people the captain for the day and they can lead through the exercises.
5. It's not about winning - they need to understand the difference but don't sell your soul for a win. If you promise people that you will have equal playing time, give it to them.
6. Make sure you coach - don't let an opportunity pass you by. If you see a chance to teach a lesson, stop the planned activity and coach.
7. Spend time planning each practice before you get there.

I have coached for a lot of years, and what HV just posted is brilliant in my opinion and should be given to every coach.

_________________
2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins

Just had our next practice tonight. I felt great about all of it except for one kid. He got a little bit better, but he had the same problem he was having in the game this past Saturday. He's incredibly selfish. He loves shooting and pretty much does so any chance he gets. He even shot out of turn when we were practicing different offensive drills and he was supposed to pass. As I said, he got a little better and listened at least a few times during the course of practice, but then during scrimmage he was back at it trying to shoot the ball any time he could and dribble with his head down into the lane and shoot some crazy layup. One of his teammates started getting on him though in actually a pretty respectful way saying he's gotta play as a team. In this upcoming game I'm gonna have him coming off the bench and I'm gonna talk to him quickly about it.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

The rest of the practice was awesome though. It was easy to identify what we had to work on, and they all seemed to be buying into the idea of moving the ball and setting off ball screens and by the time we had scrimmaged at the end of the practice they were cleanly executing plays and pick n rolls on several occasions. It was like a whole different set of players than I've seen scrimmage and play recently. I think they'll do a lot better this weekend.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I didn't know Nate Robinson had a son.

Great post by Hawkeye Vince. It's too late for me to follow his advice but some other guys on here can learn.

_________________
favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

Spoken like a true Cubs fan.


This is a good thing you are doing here, FF. I hope its fun for you and the kids, and that you both get to learn a lot.

_________________

I also think its great that there is an actual score, thus winners and losers. In this "participation ribbon" society parents today have made, its great to see that your kids will actually learn how to lose and how to win. They will win and lose throughout their lives, so its great that they get to experience that at a young age.

_________________

Yep. And after they blew that game in the 4th quarter this weekend I thought they needed some motivation, so I gave them the old Baldwin speech from Glengarry Glenn Ross. I think they're gonna close a lot better this weekend.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Another suggestion FF....get a couple medicine balls to use for passing drills. They will help the kids to throw crisper passes, rather than lazy ones that get picked off.

_________________
Go Cubs!!!!

They blew the game? Keep up that attitude and your star player is going to send you packing.

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

My star player went 0-12 and fouled out this past Saturday. I'm pretty sure he's already starting the process.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul