Hello. Glad I found this forum. So far its great.

I'll be coach a team of 10 8-9 year olds (3rd and 4th grade) this winter. This will be my second year coaching. Last year, I figured out pretty quickly that after one move, the kids either fogot the rest of the play or got confused and things deteriorated from there. Based on last year's experience, I have spent a lot of time trying to develop a "workable" offense. So here is my plan for your comments:

First, this will all go in over the season -- not all at once. Start basic and progress as we get better. We'll start in a simple 5 out set.

Here are the offensive rules (I tried to keep it to 5):
(1) Take the open shot.
(2) Look to penitrate -- drive or pass. (I want them to focus on getting the ball inside)
(3) If the ball is dribbled at you, cut back door to the basket, then look to screen. (using this as a no pass wing entry)
(4) After you pass, cut to the basket (ie; give and go), then look to screen.
(5) Don't stand still -- Fill the open spots.

We'll also incorporate an intial screen movement from our starting set, eventually.

My hope is to get a quick hit off of a baslet cut, give and go, drive to the basket, etc. After that, it is anyone's guess as offense generally break down into a free for all.

That's it in a nutshell. Thoughts?

Hi Golfman, thank you for your thoughts!

If I'm going to coach a 8&9 year old team, here would be my priorities.

1. Teach athletic movements such as running, skipping, crawling, moving laterally, and so on. Basically, play games and have little drills that improve athletic ability. A simple game like tag goes a long way. Too many kids skip this phase and develop sport-specific skills first. This hurts them in the long-run. How many times do you see college coaches skipping on an extremely skilled player who is unathletic for an athlete whose baksetball skills may not be that great? You can read more on this at this link: http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/b ... age-of-10/

2. Teach basic skills such as pivoting, jump stops, ball handling, passing, and form shooting (away from basketballs & against a wall). The kids have to get comfortable with ball skills before they can even think about an offense. Check out this page as well: http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/c ... youth.html

3. Teach some general offensive concepts such as catch and get in triple threat, pass and cut, pass and screen away, and spacing. Trying to run an offense will be a waste of time when you could be making them better skilled players which will get them further in the long run. However, I do like your rules. You just might want to free them up even more.

Again, thank you for your contributions!

While I generally agree with you., I think you need to give them some structure for offense during the game. You can't run a full fleged offense. But they need some idea of where to line up, what to do, etc. Otherwise, you just end up with a "rugby" game.

golfman: i like your 5 principles. i don't know if my 3rd graders can remember how to tie their own shoes, let alone remember these five things, but it's good stuff for me to reinforce in every practice and game.

Joe: i've been applying what you say throughout my whole season and think it's great advice. i'm surprised at how poor my 3rd graders' skill are just basically running around, catching a ball and keeping their heads up. i think it's a result of, as you say, being too sport specific...they also just don't do much in the way of pick-up games or just playing around...that's a reflection of changes in our society, but that's a topic for another time...

i've come to realize the following:
1) kids are indeed fast learners, and just when i've reached my level of exasperation with them, they do some things right. so that means i need to just repeat, reinforce and continue to encourage - i think coach kelbick mentioned something like this in a post.
2) i can't throw too much at them at once.
3) appealing to their inherent nature to play "grab ass"...pete newell used to encourage a lot of grab-ass time in practices, and i find that my kids tend to have more fun, play more as a team, and play smarter when they're free to freelance a bit, but with the coaches blessing and encouragement to "go for it" out there.

it's all fun stuff...i just hope my blood pressure medicine lasts until the end of the season...

--Pat

Flanders, you're right. They will have a difficult time remembering. That's why I kept it to 5. I tried to get it to three. If you put the rules in a few at a time over the season it will sink in, especially for your more interested players. But you have to tell them everything. Last year, I didn't tell them to take the shot. Guess what, they didn't. About midway thru the first qtr. of the first game, I added rule #1 -- take the shot.

I spent the off season working on a system of progessions from basic to advanced. We'll start slow and work into it as far as we can go. We are going to spend a lot of time playing 2 on 2 and 3 on 3 at different ends of the court.

At this age level you'll not only have a skill difference between players but a knowledge and interest difference. On a team of 10, you'll be lucky to get 5 interested in learning the game and paying attention. The others will just want to "play." Thus, any offense which relies on one of those kids to do something consistently will run into trouble because they won't do it. Last year, I eventually created 2 squads -- the five that got it and the five that didn't. By the end of the season, the first 5 could run dummy offense without supervision. It was a thing of beauty. The other 5, well not too good. We start in a few weeks. Good luck to you.