I am a father , who coaches the local high school team in the summer months when the school coaches can't be involved. I have coached boys BB for 8 years,(grade school and Jr. high) and have coached girls AAU ball for the last 9 years,(ever since my daughter was in 2nd grade). The high school team she plays on has a unique situation and I want to be able to help the H.S. coaches in the off season. The team will be comprised of (5) exceptional girls, (2) sophs and (3) juniors. My daughter is a 6'2 " center and is surrounded by two outstanding incoming sophs that averaged over 12 pts per game and two other juniors that averaged 8 pts per game and 8 rebounds. I really believe that this group has state championship potential, if they are developed correctly, and have the correct conditioning and mentoring. The coach of the H.S. team has given me the OK to develop them in the summer off season, as they can't be involved. Please lend me your knowledge and insight, as I have a gut feeling that this group can achieve goals that haven\'t been reached in nearly 30 years, the last state championship team for this team. I will attempt to raise money as needed to purchase whatever I need to make this happen. I have an outstanding nucleus and and at least (3) of these girls will play some sort of women's college ball. I look forward to hearing from you.

Steve

Steve,

It's great that your reaching out for advice. Sounds like you have an exciting team! Before I fully address your question, I think it’s important to remind of you what's truly important...

I'm a very competitive person, love to win, and it's a lot of fun. But let me warn you that winning is not the most important thing here. There are far more important things going on here...

- Your players learning life lessons -- teamwork, how to be proactive, serving others, winning gracefully, getting along with others, working hard, etc.
- The players enjoying themselves, learning to love sports, exercise, and the game of basketball.

Having your eyes focused too much on winning can ruin these things. Only one team in the state can win a championship, yet some teams act like that's the only important thing. Sure that's what you strive for, but not at the sacrifice of teaching life lessons, setting a good example, and so on.

I don't mean to preach to you, but I've seen too many parents and coaches get caught in this trap, especially with the really talented teams that have high expectations. It's so exciting to be involved with a team that can be so successful that it’s common to sight of what is truly important.

Regarding what to teach these players, I have a story that might help you...

A few years back I was coaching high school sophomore boys. A very talented team was on the way in. It was exciting. These kids were expected to compete for a state championship when they reached the varsity. They won almost all their games in youth leagues, won all kinds of championships, and even went undefeated (without two of their stars) when they were freshman.

The ended up losing a handful of games when I coached them and then lost a good number of games when they were varsity seniors. They did not make it to state. Yeah, they were a good team but the parents think they underperformed and in a sense, they got worse when they reached varsity.

So why did this happen?

In this situation (and I've seen the same thing many other times), there were a couple main reasons...

1) The kids were early bloomers. They stopped growing a little early and some of the other kids caught up with them.
2) They won most of their games at an early age by pressing, getting steals, fast breaks, and lay ups out of transition. They would make huge runs and over power teams with their full court press and literally beat the other team with lay ups.
3) I think this had a lower impact than the above two things - but I believe there was a little burn out. These kids played so many games in youth bball that they lost a little fire. Other kids that bloomed later, practiced more in the off season and caught up to them.

Going back to #2. These kids relied on pressing and getting lay ups off of steals for so many years, they ended up having the following problems at the varsity level...

- Their press didn't work as well because now the kids they were playing were stronger, had better skills, and they could handle the press much better. So they couldn't just rely on the press anymore.

- These kids didn't know how to execute in half court. Unless they had break away lay ups or fast break numbers, they struggled executing a half court offense.

- They didn't develop as good as fundamental skills as they could have because these kids didn't need to. They won pretty much all their games by pressing and at the time there was no need to master the fundamentals skills of basketball. They were an average outside shooting team, their footwork was average, their half court passing was average, they were not good offensive fundamentals (reading screens, cutting, etc), and so on. But it was so hard to see these shortcomings because at the time they were winning all these games. These shortcomings did not become obvious until they were at the varsity level.

So I'm hoping that this story might help you avoid this mistake and also help you see what is important.

I would focus on…

Teaching life lessons. Setting a good example. Teach fundamental skills that work no matter who is coaching them. Work with the high school coach to get suggestions from them. And teach all the detailed fundamental stuff - footwork, screening, cutting, shooting, ballhandling, passing, etc.
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/fundamentals/basketballfundamentals.html

There is an old saying.. Players are developed in the Summer and Teams are developed in the season so spend a lot of time developing their individual fundamental skills. During the summer is not the time to worry about Ws and Ls... IF You take care of the above, the Ws will take care of themselves.
Spend the majority of your time on fundamentals and then teach the HS coaches system offensively and defensively.