Hello BTB team

Thank you for all the information that you put out here so useful!
Im a parent of a player and coaching a girls team 11-13years (Youth in the US?) in Oslo Norway
I never played professional basketball as a kid, I played soccer :)
But i love the game and play at the neighborhood every day when its not snowing. i watch 1000s of hours of NBA, WNBA, Euroleage, Israeli league etc

I started to help coaching in the mid season, i found a team with very poor skill level, and no game understanding, no spacing, no passing

I used most of the time working on ball handling and shooting form, i didn't work with a system and just used different drills from the site, next year im going to coach the team by my self and i was thinking to be more systematic with what/when & how i teach. I watched few times the attack & counter system, M2M defense by jim, and motion offence by Don, its a lot of information and im not sure where to start??
How often should i will change drills? how i make footwork fun? do i need to make things super fun or build a team that want to work hard and dont care for fun?
Here is what i thinking will be the correct layout
Main focus 40min Skills: Footwork, shooting ball handling , 20min M2M defense brick by brick, 20min Motion offence step by step,

The Goals of the season is to make the player better, to make the team better, and to win our first game (The core of team was together for 3 years & never won a game)

Keep the god work! Maor

Maor -

I'll answer your, "should it be fun" question. YES! Absolutely! Having "fun" is the #1 reason kids play sports and not having fun is the #1 reason they quit playing sports. You can have fun while maintaining control and having structured/intense practices with high expectations.

A few examples of adding some fun to your practices and team:

-make your drills competitive
-have consequences for the losers during competitive drills - losers do 5 push ups and bark like dogs (or whatever you want ducks, monkeys)
-avoid having kids standing around in lines
-3 to 4 hard intense drills then throw in a drill/game the kids like ("if you get this last drill done with some hard work we'll do the FUN drill you guys like")
-candybar for everyone that takes a charge during a scrimmage
-for one of the games, make it crazy sock game
-have the kids (and you) come up with a cool breakdown chant
-if you have the opportunity to name your team, make it creative and fun

Just some thoughts.

Oh, good on you for taking on this coaching, I think you'll have a blast!

Everything Coach Rob said is great in regards to making things fun. I always say "Why can't we work hard and have fun?" I think you can if you take his tips.

I think your outline is a great start. You can tweak things weak to weak based on needs as well. One week you might spend 30 minutes on offense or 30 minutes on defense.

If you haven't checked it out yet, Jim Huber's Man to Man Defense has a step-by-step guide in the eBook. I would check it out. it's on page 7.

For the Attack & Counter footwork system, I'd focus on chapter 2. Once everybody starts to get better with the footwork and counters, I would progress to Chapter 3 and Chapter 7. From there, you can sprinkle in stuff from other chapters.

For motion offense, it depends on how you like to teach. In past years when I worked with your age group, I just started with teaching them spacing, pass and cut, and backdoor cuts. After that, I start to incorporate pass and screen away. I've also done most of this in a 5-out when working with youth teams.

And sorry for the delayed response, I didn't see this as not being answered.

Also, maybe this discussion will help you out:

viewtopic.php?f=56&t=1460

^ ^ ^ Agree with that discussion, some good info on basics of an offense.

Thank you for all the replys!
I was thinking on having season start talk with the team where I present my goals and values, something similar to what Joe write on in his blog, and maybe choosing a captain as well
I'm sure I will use your help during the season :)

Good luck