I am a first year coach of 1st and 2nd grade basketball. I told parents at the beginning of the year we would work on team concepts and fundamentals. Every practice I run a drill to get the kids into triple threat position (teach athleticism) and dribbling. I have dribble relay races and dribble follow the leader (me). Then I mix in footwork, passing, shooting (form and lay-ups) and finally spacing with drills and scrimmage.

I love getting your news letter with new ideas for drills. You guys are fantastic, I couldn't have done it without you.

Love the articles and advice. Please keep them coming.

Thank you for the kind words. We're glad we can help!

Looks like you're designing practices for today's youth

Great point-Coach Tony DeMatteo about today's kids - Doesn't think kids have changed; thinks ATTENTION SPANS HAVE CHANGED http://bit.ly/uAB4Il

Nice writeup - sent it along with other items to my son's middle school BB coach.

Bob Bigelow has some excellent videos about coaching kids. In fact there is a passing drill that is worth the video...I did a variation of it, but what he does is much much better.
Things I believe that should be taught at every practice from years of coaching up to the 8th grade:
Every practice for every age begins with ball handling. IE, moving the ball around the waist, the hips, each leg, the neck, drop catch etc. One thing I have added to the routine that I haven't seen others do is, squat, toss the ball in the air and jump to catch it.
Teach chinning the ball.
Teach pivoting.
Teach jump stop.
Teach jumping to catch the ball. Always.
These are all easy things to teach that improve their athleticism and their bball skills.
You will be amazed at how quickly their hand eye coordination improves and how rapidly TO's decline.

Oh, don't worry about winning. Teach them to play and have fun playing.

Great video, Clarence! Everybody should watch that video. And thanks for passing on the article.

It's funny you mention the design of the practice for today's youth. This occurrence happens to me almost every practice which are 90 minutes long. When I blow the whistle and bring everybody in to wrap up the practice, I'll get at least one puzzled look from a kid and he'll say, "Practice is over already?"

I like the drill, Michael! And then progress to throwing it off the backboard, chin, turn and outlet to player on the wing.

Joe,

Thats the mark of a well planned practice, you must be ending practice on a fun note... that always brings them back.

We used to end practice with "situations" The kids loved those and it was a great learning situation.

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I am limited to one hour of practice per week. Because of the time crunch I pre-plan every practice and keep it to the basics trying to use drills that teach multiple skills. The most important drills first and so on. But every week I find myself not getting to something I wanted to cover.

Thats a tough gig for anyone... the only thing you can do is to keep right on schedule.. if something isn't going well, move on to the next thing.. hopefully other things will go well and you might be able to pick up some time and go back on it. The last thing you want to do is keep on a drill for a long time and miss other important things. I learned that the hard way too.

Good luck

I am a first year coach for boys and girls junior high. Your resources have been extremely helpful! Thanks!

Great stuff, here guys. You could run a couple of seasons worth of things just from this one article.

I have coached various age groups and it amazes me how little time is spent teaching ball handling and footwork at the younger levels.

Everytime I read a Haefner article I learn something new or rehash something I have forgotten.

Thanks to Clarence and Mike for their input and links.

Keith,

I'm not sure what "younger" levels you are talking about.... YOUTH programs I would agree, mostly because they are volunteer coaches doing the best they can. Sites like this one can help coaches for all age groups - but especially the volunteer coaches.

If only those coaches knew of sites like this one, and all the coaching groups out there... there is a wealth of information out there, all they have to do is to be informed about where they can go.

I heard this somewhere... Don Kelbick I think, IF you cant pass or catch the ball, you cant play... I would add this.... being able to dribble with either hand and be able to defend.

I coach youth basketball I find your info very helpfull.i been coaching four years it still is a task but without this kind of info I wouldnt know were we would be thanks and keep it coming

This great information. Many of the ideas I have incorproated into my practices. One thing I have found is that with MS Word I can cut and paste different drills and have been using the same practice template for many years.

Thanks for some new ideas.

Going into my third year of coaching. Started with 4th and 5th graders and moving up to 6th-8th this year. I have followed breakthrough''s advice in nearly every aspect of my coaching and the results speak for themselves. Kids having fun, working together and the first year going undefeated and winning the city championship (first time ever a team won the league title and tournament title) and second year (all different players) runners up in the city championship. This all happened not because of me but because the players had fun and didn''t have to worry about a coach screaming at them the entire game. Thanks Breakthrough. Oh and only one unsatisfied parent which was quickly remedied.

That's great, Matt! We're glad to hear about your team's success.

Takes good players and good coaches to do that well!

Hi
We only have kids for one yr inThe league I coach in. (I know that sucks right lol) what is sum advice can u guys give me on building a fundamental team in 3 months.

Hello, thanks for all of the great information you share!

I have been coaching rec for a couple of years and have moved up (with my daughter) to 6th-8th grade. At this age range each team seems to have a trend of some girls who have been playing for several years and some girls who are brand new to basketball. Do you have any recommendations for running practices so that it is beneficial to both groups (i.e. how to keep the experienced girls from getting bored when teaching the basics).

Thanks!

Hi Chad, I have coached in school and now recreation programs. One thing you might try which has helped me. We do a shadow program for part of the practice. Like sending a person to learn a new job. One new player is assigned to one experienced player. The experienced player will help make sure the new player understands and uses the right footwork, stands in the right position, etc. The experienced player does it first then the new player does the same action. This activity gives a special place for those "in the know" and those "wanting to know". The experienced player makes the corrections. This also helps your experienced player in not only knowing how to do something, but how to explain it and correct errors. You are training assistant teachers at the same time. I do not mix them all the time. For example when we play a game at the end, I do put players together who have played together. New players will see they have to work hard to get up to level.

Clarita - I think thats a great idea... I did that in my summer camps, had my varsity players there to help the younger kids.... worked well. You get a few things out of that.... ONE - IF they can teach it, that means they know how to do it.. this helps ME. :-) You challenge the older kids to be leaders, which helps the Varsity during the season. It sells the younger kids to play in your program.

Chad - At that age, all those kids need to continue to work on their fundamentals. Keep your drills short and keep the kids moving. That way they wont get bored. My typical time frames for drills might be from 4-7 minutes except for our offense / defense scrimmaging.

Mon - You said it yourself. Look at your players, work on the fundamentals they aren't good at. I'm not sure of your age group and this can make a lot of difference. The younger they are, the more you have to work on fundamentals.... and Ws and Ls take a back seat. Good luck

Chad - We face the same issues, even at the high school level.

When we teach defense, we start at the very beginning (stance) every single year. It's good review for the experienced players because they always forget things and needed for the new players.

For skills, teaching is usually short bursts and then quickly start drilling. Since we spend almost our entire practice on skills, we don't have much of an issue with past players getting bored. We spend little time teaching "a system".

Don Kelbick gave me this advice a while back. I think it's great advice. I wrote it down and it has always stuck with me.

"Put learning to play basketball ahead of learning your system."

So pretty much our whole practice is spent on fundamentals. Offense is motion and takes a few minutes to teach. Defense is man, which is based on defensive principles (fundamentals). Fast break is super simple and can be learned in a few minutes. Press break is pretty much same as motion and fast break with very minor adjustments. We don't run plays, except for one super simple end of game play. The only thing that takes a little time is our inbounds plays but those are easy and simple too.

So pretty much all drills are based on skills. I encourage everyone to get out of comfort zone and make mistakes. Which means new players make mistakes and older players really push hard (go fast) and make mistakes too.

Then we do competition and split them up based on skill level.
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/fundamentals/missing-link-player-development.html

Hope this helps give you ideas.

Jeff -

Very interesting concept.... I know I spent lot of time on fundamentals... but not like you are describring. I felt like I had a good balance.....

I wonder IF I could have done that when I was coaching varsity kids ???

Obviously it works for you.... I wonder if anyone else had done this? I do like this!!

I used this method at the youth and freshman level. It worked extremely well. I have no doubt it would work at the varsity level as well. And college too for that matter. But just like anything you have to buy into it as a coach and commit to it.

Clarita/Ken/Jeff, thanks for the tips! I just held my first practice and your advice rings true, even the experienced players appreciate fundamental development.

Jeff, thanks for the additional link, very helpful.

Chad

Could you please elaborate a little bit more on you view of how to develop athleticism?