Hi guys, first of all I would really like to thank you guys for this resource and all of the great information! I have spent many many hrs on here and am amazed at how much this has helped me coach.
Just a little about me for back ground; grew up playing sports. Had a couple of kids and now coach them in most of the sports they participate in. They are 10 and 8. Typical stuff, soccer team needs a coach, so I step in. Don't know much about soccer, but Google fixes that, at least well enough for k-2nd graders. Same with softball. I love basketball and am coaching both of my kids teams. I believe in fun and fundamentals. Winning is good, but I'll take a loss any day if they play well and learn.
My daughter is a very promising basket ball player and I have started to really focus on her and her team. We went to 3 camps this summer and I spent every minute at them watching and learning. Her 5th grade has a ton of kids who go out for Basketball. We split them by ability and I coach the better ones. I believe I have very solid drills that teach the kids fundamentals, while challenging them. This is where it starts to go off the rails a bit. They quickly learn the skill that is being taught, then seem to lose interest in getting good at them. They call me "strict" because I really harp on them to practice it in practice so they can use it in a game.
Today we got beat badly by a poor team, and it really got my kids down. As usual, after the game I write down what I think they need to improve on so I have a game plan for the next week. What I wrote down was literally everything we have been working on for the last 5 weeks. I am having a terrible time at getting them to be aggressive in any way. Be it a loose ball, rebound or player standing by them just holding the ball. they think getting open is yelling at the person with the ball, even though I have gone over many times v cuts and the like.
I really am at my wits end. Why spend any more time on drills, when they don't get or use the skills they teach? Seriously, I heard a parent in the bleachers say " why doesn't he teach them how to pass?" when we spend 10-15 minutes per practice on passes. Two of our warm-ups are pass drills I use from this site!
Any ideas how to motivate or gets kids to learn? We had 7 lane violations on free thows. Where is the disconect? The ref told them why, but yet they continued to do it.

Thanks for any help.

Thad

My first thoughts are to wonder if you're mixing in any fun/competitive drills to your practices. If you are running normal drills to teach the fundamentals, find a couple fun, competitive games that will re-emphasize the drill. Kids love actually love drills where there is a winner and a loser. And it gets them working hard without them feeling like they are being "pushed too hard" by a "strict" coach.

Things like dribble knockout, regular knockout, 1 on 1 or 2 on 2 drills. 2 on 1, 3 on 2.

As far as passing and getting open, I love having my teams scrimmage themselves and I add in a rule that they can't pass for the first 5 minutes or so. Really gets them working to get open and throwing better passes. Once they start to experience what works and what doesn't work in a live action setting, the light goes on for them. Self discovery is a huge part of the young players learning to play the game.

I was thinking the same thing... use plenty of fun and competitive game like drills.

I think the following will help:

- use plenty of fun drills
- use competitive game like drills
- change things up for the standard skills.

Don't get me wrong, we still do the basic skill drills without the fun gimmicks or competition. But I try to limit to a fairly small chunk of practice and also mix things up. When you think about it... there's isn't much you can do... dribbling, shooting, passing, footwork. You just find different ways to practice the same things (a variety of drills) so player don't even realize they are doing the same thing. This helps with boredom and keeps things fresh.

Then we do lots of fun stuff too while working on skills at the same time. Players seem to really enjoy practices and we spent 90% or more of the practices with our youth teams on fundamental skills.

I also think adding competitive game-like drills are really important. I do this with 1st graders and high school teams.

I think no dribble 3on3,4on4, or 5on will help with your passing. You can do passing drills all day long for years, but they won't translate into games unless some of them are gamelike. I really like no dribble drills and drills like this to help them translate into games (see part 2 at this link):
http://jeffhaefner.com/coach/my-favorite-passing-drills-how-to-cut-down-on-bad-passes-and-turnovers/

Remember, these are young kids. They are going to make the same mistakes over and over. Even high school kids will do that to an extent.

Keep things fun, keep teaching, and they will come around.

For aggressiveness and motivation... if you want them to be aggressive you need to emphasize that constantly. It will take time. Keep track of hustle stats like rebounds, deflections, diving on the floor. Kids want to please you and if they know it's important they will eventually focus on it.

And remember you can only be good at some many things. You'll never be great at everything. There just isn't enough time in the day. So choose what you emphasize carefully.

And there will always be critics. I have been doing this for a while and get to study bball for a living. I'm certain there are spectators watching our games and parents wondering what we do in practice and they are criticizing what I do. That comes with the territory.

If you want links to any resources for fun and competitive drills, let us know.

Not much to add here, both coaches above gave some solid advice. One thing you might try is picking one skill on offense and one on defense you want them to learn and emphasizing that in a game. Could be 5 passes before they shoot, could be blocking out, could be getting loose balls, but only pick two per game. Here's the deal, you'll have to let some other stuff slide to a point. I found that when I overwhelmed my kids with too many things to do on the court, they ended up not doing any of them very well.

Thank you very much for the advice! Another reason why I love this site. Each of you has given me some very valuable insight and advice, again thank you.
I think I will have to temper my expectations back a bit and just let them play.

Jeff, I think you are absolutely correct and I haven't done this very well Same with Coach Rob, I may be over loading them. It just amazes me though because I coach a 3rd grade boys team who have never played before and they can't seem to get enough.

And coach coachmt, I think this is where I have absolutely failed I think I manage the practices too much with structure and drills.
I will start implementing some of your ideas starting tomorrow! We'll see! I'll report back!
Thanks again guys!

Thad

Hi coaches, thought I'd check in with you and tell you how the week of practice and game went; It went great! I started out by handing them each a piece of paper and asked them to write down 2 things for me; what they thought they needed to do better and how I could teach it to them. I got the predictable replies of what to work on, but how to help them was surprising. They all suggested doing specialty drills. I explained that are done with drills for a while and we are going to start doing some different things.
We lack aggression, foot speed and the comprehension of getting "open". I came up with his crazy idea of playing tag, but kind of like flag football where you have to pull a flag off them. I called it flag tag, tore up an old sheet for flags to hang off of their hips. It was one of the best "drills" I have ever seen. Had one girl as "it" and all of them contained in the 3 point arc. I could not believe some of the moves the girls came up with, and have never seen them run so fast. After several rounds, it proved to be quite the conditioning drill as well. We still went over our play, inbound plays and trap breakers, but most of the week was spent doing much different "drills".
We easily won our game and the girls played a lot better. All of the parents were giddy they looked so much better. Amazing how you can turn things around with some good advice! Thanks.

Thad

Coach -

Glad to hear that things are getting better..... what is it they say? " Out of the mouths of babes? "

Use the KISS method with the girls... you can always add things as you go along. AND make sure that they are having FUN.

As for the fans / coaches in the stands.... forget about them. When you win, you are the next Bobby Knight, when you lose, you are the dumbest thing that ever coached. The longer you coach, the more you will go through this, so don't worry about it. The people in the stands have never lost a game. :-)

Good luck and keep up the good work.

Check this page out

http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/mental/sports_psychology_and_children.html?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=News93-Oth&utm_newsid=1212

Great update! Always nice to hear a follow-up when folks come on here. Love the flag tag idea, keep thinking outside the box. Couple of more for you:

5 good passes - use teams of 3, half court, they have to make 5 good passes to stay on offense. No dribbling allowed, defense can be aggressive but no obvious fouling. If defense gets a steal, they are on offense ASAP, next team hustles on court to replace old offense.

3 up - two teams shooting from the elbows or a bit closer. First team to get 3 wins. If team A shoots and makes it, that's 1 up. If team B makes it right after that it's, 0. If B makes one after that, they are now 1 up. Shooter gets their own rebound and passes back to next person in line. Great way to end a practice.

I'm On It! - this one is more outside the box. I made up 8 1/2 x 11 pieces of paper with I'm On It! on them. Throughout practice I'd hold one up or an assistant would hold one up. First player to get to the coach won. We kept track of each player's progress and the player with the most times of getting to the coach was the winner. They received a candy bar or pack of gum. The point of this exercise was to teach them that basketball required focus and paying attention. We'd hold the papers at different times - maybe during a drill, maybe during a water break, during a scrimmage on a dead ball. We even brought them to games and would hold one up before a game or after a game. Kids got a kick out of it. We didn't do it every practice as it can get a bit disruptive, however, we didn't tell them when we were going to do it.