I've got a group of 4/5 Grade Girls. Just a city rec league. We get 2 hours of practice time a week. They use the full size women's ball shooting at 10 foot rims.
Maybe two of the 5th graders are at what you might call average development for that grade. The rest are all a year or two behind where they should be.
Size ranges from 4' tall 50 pounds to 5'5" 135 or so.
The 5'5" girl we do have is timid and her parents say she plays rough with her older brother, but don't know why she is so timid on the court. Her Dad is one of our coaches.
Half of them have not played before. Some can't make a decent pass when it's just the two of them playing catch.
I can't get most of them to even understand what it means to "stay between your girl and the basket".
About half of them have the foot speed the keep up with the other team. The others seem to try but just don't have that "urgency" I guess is the word. It takes them a few seconds to understand they need to get back on defense. By that time, layup for the other team.

We only played one game so far. Unfortunately it was against the best team in the league. Those girls look like they have been playing together for awhile. Probably play some during the summer. Almost all of them were bigger and stronger than my girls. We lost about 55 to 0. Didn't score a basket and probably only got off 4 or 5 shots.

They seemed to forget everything we have been working on. I tried the simple 5-out offense. Pass then cut to the basket. They seemed to understand in practice, but in the game, they didn't even line up properly.

I constantly ask, "does that make sense" "do you understand" during practice. I don't know if they are all so timid they don't want to answer or what. Because it was pretty obvious they didn't understand much of anything.

What do you do when you have only 3 or 4 girls out of 10 who even understand what's going on?

I've been doing the basics, dribbling, passing, etc.

If they can't make proper passes to each other, how do you even get to the next steps of understanding where to position your self, how to move on offense, or even how to properly bring the ball up the court.

I see everywhere posts about "make it fun" and people telling me before we even started "remember they are just girls".

We have been. They want to do dribble knockout every practice. They said the 5-out pass and cut drill was fun.

I think I've almost let them have too much fun and not enough of how to actually play and understand the game at all.

Thanks. I've read pretty much your entire website here and your blog. Love both of them. So I kind of already guessed what you were going to say anyway. :)

I was never worried about winning of course, but never thought we'd get embarrassed like that. It wasn't me who was worried about the score, but the girls.

I do ball handling, dribbling, and passing at the beginning of every practice.

I find it hard to work with them, when half can pick up the basics of a pass/cut motion offense, but the other half can't barely catch the ball.

It also seems that when I do one of the string motion offense drills you've explained, they don't seem to understand that is something they can do in the actual game. I don't know how to get them to correlate the two, you know. To understand, yes this is something we can do in a game. This is an actual play you can do in the game.

Every girl has to play half the game. 10 players total, 8 minute quarters, they stop the game at 4 mins, so it's pretty easy to follow the rule. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to put the 5 5th graders who have some ability together, then the 5 4th graders who almost have none together. There are three girls in that 4th grade group who can sort of dribble. They may not have anyone who can catch it in that group, but at least we'll be able to get the ball across half court.

I tried to mix them together, expecting the 5th graders to sort of take over I guess. To help the 4th graders move and such. Yeah, that didn't happen.

The other part is with the 5th graders I do have, who played last year. Didn't get much instruction at all. Not much ball handling, dribbling, or passing drills, if any.

The offense was pretty much dribble down and move around where you wanted. Most of scoring was done by one girl. And that was when she got the rebound, then started a one person fast break.

They hardly handled the ball at all.

Ahhhh Coach: I do feel your pain but to quote Denzel Washington, practice is like Novocaine, if you keep taking it, eventually it is going to work. , I am living proof coach that if you stick to the fundamentals of passing catching dribbling and shooting, work hard on defense and rebounding things will turn around for you. Your team may not be skilled in the area of pass making and scoring, however, everyone can play defense and everyone can rebound if taught correctly. The problem with today's game is these skills get forgotten in our haste to teach scoring. Don't get frustrated Coach just pick the game apart, drill the individual parts and eventually they will make up the whole. give your girls a chance to surprise you. Good Luck Coach Mac ,

CoachMac, I did read your China thread. Sounded very familiar.

Yes, I believe in those things. And I do believe we're going to get better.

One other thing I'm finding very hard to understand why some of these girls can't seem to understand a simple thing like, "stay between your girl and the basket".

I tell them this, I show them this, yet they go right back to standing in front of their girl or to the side of them. It's enough to pull your hair out.

We'll keep trying. Next practice is Tuesday. I wrote the league and requested extra time. We usually only get one hour. I asked for an extra half hour.

And thanks for the support coaches. I'm not sure I'm qualified to be addressed as coach. I'm just a Dad trying to help his daughter and her friends.

Coach: I have coached for over forty years......every level including, high school, university, international and pro....and they have problems playing between the man they are defending and the basket. I have coached girls, and won four national championships with them...most fun I had coaching in all my forty years. but they too had the same problem. It takes drill after drill after drill and soon they will get it. With the middle school;; kids im coaching presently, I did a lot of zig zag drills, wave drills. In fact, this afternoon, I zig zagged cones, made the defender tuck his hands in the back of his shorts, told him to get his head on the basketball and keep it there, dont reach, and and do not lose sight of the ball, when you reach a cone touch it and prepare to go the other way...I have some more complex drills for defense coach if you wish I will be happy to share them with you. P.s..remember, the operative word is patience Coach Mac