Hello.

I have been coaching K-3 youth basketball (Saturday League) for the past few years and enjoyed it. This past season (Jan-Mar) I coached the 5th-6th girls school basketball team through a course of 5 tournaments against other county schools. This is my first experience with an age group who is really coming into their own skills wise and love the game.

My question is...I have a few girls' parents that have asked me to work their girls one on one during the summer months. I have never did anything like this, and not exactly sure what to focus on. Do you have any suggestions at this point? Thanks!

I generally cater for the individual player and their needs... but for the most part it's footwork, ballhandling, shooting, and finishing. Those are the areas of focus and the more you learn about player development in those areas the better. Many books and DVDs have been written about each area... so getting into much detail here would be difficult.

One challenge when working with young kids is not burning them out. 5th grade is kinda young. When working with an individual it's more challenging to make it fun because they are by themselves and you're limited in the drills you can do. Here are some ideas on that.
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/coaching/individual-player-to-compete-during-an-individual-workout-session.html

Thanks Jeff. This advice will help greatly I'm sure.

I also have a daughter going into 4th grade next year. Any suggestions on a summer workout program for her? She's really undersized and lacks the strength to even shoot a free throw at this point.

I think that's pretty normal. My daughter going into 4th grade is very agile and athletic... but small. She isn't strong enough to shoot a free throw either. I'm not worried about it and spend little time on shooting. My main concern is to make sure they don't get bad shooting habits. So I do work on some basic form with a few of them because they shoot outside of practice a lot.

My best advice is to get her in soccer, gymnastics, swimming, softball, martial arts, (play a bunch of different age appropriate sports seasonally). That's the best thing you can do for her regarding basketball at this point.

Then when it comes to "basketball stuff" focus on footwork, ballhandling, and defensive agility. Those are more age appropriate things to work on and areas you can actually make significant progress in.