I love the website and all the advice you all give. I appreciate that you actually corresponded with me last year when I was purchasing some material on the motion offense.

I was hoping you could give me some feedback on the following scenario;

I am once again coaching a 5/6 boys youth team. 11 players. Everyone makes a team. There are some suggestions on playing time; but not guaranteed. The only suggestion is that coaches talk ahead of time and play their non-starters in Q2.

I have one kid who is very underdeveloped in his basketball skills. He is in 5th grade. I am not sure if he has played any sport before to be honest. I have had kids like this before, but after 3 practices he is still out of place in almost every drill. I have pulled him to the side and worked 1 on 1 multiple times, but can't be doing this on a constant basis. While it is still very early, it is pretty clear that this is not going to change anytime soon.

For example, in the layup line this boy stops about the free throw line, takes 6-8 steps (without dribbling) and then shoots from the belly. That's OK if that was practice number one but we have done lots and lots of layups at each practice and there is not a hint of change. I have pulled to the side a couple of times and worked on this with him.

I could cite many more examples but I think you get the trend.

I am having a hard time trying to figure out how much time to spend on him vs the whole team. It is a struggle and I want to do both, but I am not seeing any progress or any understanding on the players part.

Even tonight after learning the basics of defense, we scrimmaged for a little bit. The concept that you had to be remotely in the same vicinity of the person he was guarding escaped him.

My early expectations for this player were not the same for others. I want him to develop as much as he can like I do for each player; knowing that he isn't going to turn into a great player overnight.

Any words of wisdom? Anything from your experience?


Thanks,

Been there! This is very challenging.

As you mention, the toughest part is you want to help the kid and you could easily spend the entire practice just helping him. But thats not fair to the rest of the players. Finding that balance can be very tough in this situation.

Here are ideas, questions, and thoughts...

- Is this a attention problem? Does the kid learn in a different way then the other kids? Some people learn differently. My daughter for examples learns by seeing. If you show her, she has it. Other kids read and devour everything. I am no expert on this subject but I know that every person learns in different ways. Senses and other variables come into play.

- Some kids just are not able to learn this stuff like their peers. I never used to believe this, but in recent years I have had kids where I just could not get through to them. I mean I could only get them to listen for 5 seconds at a time, max. And that's if I yelled their name very loud 5 times and grabbed their shoulder. Otherwise they were in another world.

In this case, I had to recruit other parents and/or coaches to work with them (they were assigned to help these players). And I split my time up evenly between them and the other players. This allowed me to keep moving at a decent pace.

Otherwise the other players were literally bored standing there as I tried to keep the others involved.

- Does the kid just not want to be there? Maybe he simply could care less and does not want to be there.

- Is it a confidence thing?

I have found that this happens in rec leagues. With paid club teams and what not, you rarely see this type of situation. Most players have similar attention and learning abilities.

My only advice is to be persistent and try to get an assistant. The more good help you can get, the better.

This is a tough one. Someone smarter than me probably has better comments and solutions.

Very good thoughts.

I had similar thoughts. Get some assistant coaches and split into groups. One coach taking the more skilled players and another coach taking the less skilled players. It sounds like you're just isolating the one kid and working with him by himself. Take the 3-5 least skilled kids and work with them all together. Maybe he'll pick things up in a smaller group among kids that are more his level instead of being alone or just being a little fish in the big pond of the whole team.

I've done that this year with my girls travel team. A group of our lesser players go with a coach and work on ballhandling, simple layups and shooting and play one on one. While our more skilled girls are getting a little higher level skill training. We work post moves and I'm starting to incorporate some more advanced concepts of our motion offense to them. Things like post entries, laker cuts and post reactions.

Some great ideas Joe, keep it simple though..... ge a few asistants .... as for the lay up - start them in close so they only have to take a couple of drbilles to begin with.