I'll try. We have a practice tonight. Crossing my fingers.
I'm going to also have a talk with my 5th graders. Ask them to take a leadership role on the court and help the other girls line up and understand where they need to be. Didn't have that in the first game. My one player who is vocal and understands had a cooking accident and wasn't able to play at all.

Revised our original practice schedule to this:

4 0 4 Warmup
2 4 6 Ball Handling/Maravich Drill
3 6 9 Figure 8 w/o Ball
4 9 13 1-on-1 passing
4 13 17 Star Passing
4 17 21 Cone Dribbling
4 21 25 Dribble Relay
5 25 30 Zig Zag: 1v1 Advancement w/Defend
4 30 34 Circle Box Out
5 34 39 Game of 21
5 39 44 Shell Drill
15 44 59 Motion Offense / Shooting.
25 59 84 Scrimmage
5 84 89 Inbound Plays in Scrimmage

You know, maybe this is a better question of what I really need help with.

I understand teaching the fundamentals of dribbling, passing, shooting, etc ... we do all that. Trying to at least.

How do you overcome them not even having a very general understanding of the game? Not ever even seeing a real game being played. And most of them don't have parents that know anything about it either and also haven't watched a real game before.

Is it thru scrimmages and the actual games? You just hope they eventually understand what it means when you have a red jersey on and the ref says "white ball, going that way"? Is that really the only way?

Is there anything else I can do for them in this area?

I have suggested to the parents to let them sit down and watch 15 or 20 minutes of a real game. College or high school, not pro. But I don't think any of them do.

Ahh, the life of a youth coach. It looks so easy on paper until you realize there's no draft to choose from and you get what you get. If you stick with coaching long enough, you'll see variations on this theme as you go along. In other words, there will always being some type of challenge that seems to throw a twist in your coaching plans. I dig the challenge of working with what I have and turning it into something it cool.

Going to a game was a good suggestion on your part. One thing you could do is see if there are a few games scheduled before your next game on the same court or same gym. You could ask the parents to arrive 30 min early so you could sit with your players and point things out happening on the court. Food for thought.

Unfortunately, there are no real shortcuts when it comes to grasping all the concepts and rules of a particular sport as a younger player. Experience is the best teacher and that comes with time. As a coach, you'll have to be patient as you repeat the concept for the umpteenth billionth time.

Breaking it down into smaller segments with the players who need more help is one way of teaching concepts and rules. 1v1, 2v2 type stuff. Also, make a big deal when you catch a player improving or catching a concept. Even the small stuff. Lots of encouragement here.

One thing I can tell you is usually a team never looks the same at the beginning of a season as they do towards the end. It always bums me out that the season is ending right when things seem to start cooking as a team.

Coach: Kids sitting down watching a game on tv or live, can be helpful but only if they truly understand the game. Watching a game you know nothing about is truly boring for them. Let me make a suggestion that I did with my Chinese kids, I had a session where I did nothing but explain rules. And I used videos to explain what I was trying to point out. Further, Movies, but good movies for example Hoosiers, Miracle, One on One, Finding Forester and one of my favorites for girls Gracie, its a soccer movie, but a good one. Movies such as I like Mike, Rebound, The Green Machine are sometimes entertaining, but have no basketball value, Give it a try coach, what do you have to lose? Coach Mac

I think most of it you just learn the rules by playing... scrimmages and games. Then learn during the game and then you will always get a couple things from the previous game to cover at next practice. It takes time. As an example, we have a kid in a game walk out of the FT lane after the shooter has the ball. That's a violation. So we briefly cover that rule at next practice and all the player tend to understand because they have a recent event to reference. They seem to retain by making those mistakes and learning from them.

I remember when I first starting coaching my daughters team... they would get upset because the ref called a foul on them, they would just start dribbling up the court on made baskets, and so on. I'll never forget at the end of one of our 3v3 full court games we invited in another team that was one year older. We must have lost by 90 points. At the end of the game one of the girls asked.... "Did we win?". She was totally serious. LOL.

They made so many mistakes along the way. Fast forward several years and their IQ is very high and they really know how to play the game!!!

"As an example, we have a kid in a game walk out of the FT lane after the shooter has the ball. That's a violation. So we briefly cover that rule at next practice and all the player tend to understand because they have a recent event to reference. They seem to retain by making those mistakes and learning from them."

Thank you for this. Hearing that you had this issue come up, with as much experience as you've had doing this, makes me feel a bit better. See if we had something small like that happen, I would take that as my fault. I forgot to show them how the FT works. Then I would be disappointed in myself.

"We must have lost by 90 points. At the end of the game one of the girls asked.... "Did we win?". She was totally serious. LOL.

They made so many mistakes along the way. Fast forward several years and their IQ is very high and they really know how to play the game!!!"

That's a great little story.

I wish I could have these girls for a few years like that. But being a City Rec League, it's parents coach, and first come first serve. This might be one year and done for me. They don't put any stock in the parent coach actually knowing anything at all about the game. They are just happy to get anyone to help out. It's kind of sad, as I was expecting and hoping for much more, considering this is a fairly nice suburb with plenty of schools with nice gym space.

"It looks so easy on paper until you realize there's no draft to choose from and you get what you get."

Well I don't think we ever thought it would be easy. I mean that's why I have spent so much time on this website and on Jeff's blog. I have almost memorized all of Jeff's blog by now.

In watching these girls last year, I was hoping for about the same talent level. Which was about average, They had two girls that were "stars". A bunch that were average or slightly below. Then only one first year player. That was my daughter. But I was able to get her up to at least almost average by season end. She was the only one on the team who was even lining up properly on D. And she was able to recognize the screen and sag back a bit to be ready for the ball coming around the screen. No one else on the team as able to do that, even the "stars". Offense, well the "stars" never passed her the ball. I can probably count on my hands how many times she touched the ball in the games. So I just told her to work hard on defense. That's how she could help her team that year.

I wasn't prepared for such a severe drop off in talent this year. And those first year players that I have, don't have a parent at home to provide for their daughter what I did for mine last year.

Coach: Last reply on this, I love listening to stories of some of the things kids do but in that, there is a valuable lesson. When I was a very young coach perhaps 100 years ago, I like you, I was coaching a YMCA team of girls. We had the same situation as Jeff had with a girl leaving the FT line after the ball had been handed to the shooter. During a time out, I attempted to explain the rule and the player asked me why are we just standing there while she shoots. I said, in case she misses we get the rebound. The girl nodded knowingly but as she was walking away she whispered to another player....Whats a rebound...it's at this point that I realized as a coach, you cannot take anything for granted, assume they know nothing and begin from there. Coach keep us posted on your season. I love the expression, its not where you are at the beginning that's important, , its where you are at the end. Coach mac

I had to laugh at your last post CoachMac. And thanks for conversation here. I'll definitely try to keep you guys updated.

So just last night in fact, I found myself asking almost after every sentence it seemed, "Do we all understand? Does anyone not understand? Don't be afraid to raise your hand. Because I guarantee you, you're not the only one with the question."

But I think I finally have a good handle on which girls those are now. So after I explain to the group, I can now go over to that group, kneel down to them, and talk it thru. I'm a big believer in the kneeling down to talk to these kids. Getting on their eye level. I'm only 6' foot tall. I say "only" because our other coach runs about 6'6". He played D2 college ball. Thought maybe that might be a bit intimidating for some of them.

By the way, we had a nice practice last night. The girls worked hard and were into it. Doesn't seem to be any feeling down about that first game. Which was great. Didn't get to everything on that list up there, but got to enough.

Unfortunately our team captain is still out with her foot injury. We'll call her "Yaz". But her mom seems to think she's a go for the Friday practice and Saturday game. Well she doesn't quite know she's captain yet, but I'll tell her on Friday. She's probably our best player. She's small, but handles the ball well, is vocal, and understands the game. Probably most important thou, everyone loves her and she's a nice girl. But at the same time, she's a little "bulldog" on the court.

When I talked to our 5th graders last night and asked them to be leaders out there, to help out the 4th graders. To look around at your teammates, make sure they are where they're supposed to be. I also mentioned I'd be asking Yaz, to be our team captain. They all agreed she would be best at it. That's probably something I should have done early on. We may have at least scored a point in the first game had I done that.