I've got a 4th grade girls travel team and a 5/6 grade boys rec team. In rec we see more pick and roll, ballscreen action, designed to free up the other team's best player for an easy hoop. Not a lot of action to the screener.

So far for both teams we've only worked on helping and recovering on screens. Saturday with the boys, I talked to them at halftime about switching screens and they did it very well in the second half. They communicated, they were active and I was pleasantly surprised.

I'm thinking of introducing the switch to my girls team this week. What are your opinons on the two tactics at this level?

I don't see anythng wrong with that..... take away their best option... if its the post player rolling to the basket, let the defender on the ball go under or over if she can... give her the choice as long as they communicate.

Switching is a great way of defending that too... mixing it up will confuse the offense too.... as long as you keep some pressure on the ball.

We usually switch and go under to take away the roll to the basket.

Do you have any insights on which should be taught to kids first 1) fight through screens and switch only when necessary or 2) teach them to switch on all screens? I have this debate often with other youth coaches.

Thanks,
Kari

Personally I don't think it matters what you teach first.

For ball screens with young teams, we usually start by teaching how to switch.

For "off" ball screens, we usually just teach players proper positioning, then get through. If players are in proper position, dealing with screens becomes much easier and that's how we spend our time (positioning on the court). With that said, our players sometimes end up switching on their own. I'm ok with that as long as they communicate and we never leave the ball open.

My only suggestion is to avoid getting hung up on a certain way to handle screens when they are young. For example, you could spend 20 minutes every single practice working on hedging screens with 5th graders and they would still probably struggle with hedging ball screens at the end of the year. Time is better spent on other fundamentals that can actually improve at. Later on in 8th, 9th or 10th grade they can learn hedging and various ways to defend ball screens.

My two cents.