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When Players Need You Most – Good Reminder During the Season

December 22, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 1 Comment

A few weeks ago I missed an opportunity to be there for one of my players. She was upset about fouling out early and having a tough game.  Maybe there was more going on — I don’t know.  But she was legitimately upset.  It was more than just a quick tear and all was fine.  I […]

Filed Under: Positive Impact

How to Teach Transition Offense at the Beginning of the Season

November 5, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 2 Comments

This is my first official week of basketball practices — this week I have practices with 4th grade boys, 6th grade girls, and high school varsity boys… That’s a wide range of ages!  Yet I teach them all our transition offense the exact same way.  I start teaching our 4th graders the same way I […]

Filed Under: 4th Grade Basketball, Transition

How to Be a Better Teammate – Use Steve Nash Example to Improve Your Teams Chemistry and Bring Positive Energy

October 23, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 3 Comments

Here’s an email I sent to our 6th grade girls team.  The players have really taken to it and our practices have improved — better chemistry, relationships, and a positive energy.  Feel free to copy and tweak this email for your own team… Subject: For Tigers Players. Steve Nash high fives. Please pass on. For Tigers […]

Filed Under: Team Building

Dynamic Warm Up For Basketball – Strength, Athleticism, and Injury Prevention

October 10, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 1 Comment

Here’s what we use for a dynamic warm up before basketball practice. I’m not a doctor or a certified trainer.  I’m just a coach that has borrowed ideas from other experts and put together a plan that I like and that makes sense to me. So keep that in mind as you read. I’m just […]

Filed Under: Athletic Development

15 Basketball Tryout Drills for Efficiently Evaluating Players

September 23, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 14 Comments

When conducting tryouts, you want drills that allow you to efficiently evaluate players. The key word here is “efficiently”.  You only have so much time in tryouts to evaluate players.  So you want to make good use of your time! Tryout drills should be fairly simple yet similar to what you normally do in practice.  If […]

Filed Under: Drills

11 Practice Requirements for Youth Basketball Coaches

April 24, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 9 Comments

For our 6th grade (to be) girls basketball team, we had a lot of players wanting to join so we decided to create two teams.   Both teams will run the same offense, defense, etc… but we’ll practice separate. Since I don’t have enough time to coach both teams I have recruited a couple coaches […]

Filed Under: 5th grade basketball, Practice Strategy

What We Did With Our 5th Grade Girls Team – Offense, Defense, Drills and Plays

March 23, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 22 Comments

Here’s what we did with our 5th grade girls’ team this year.  It’s surprisingly similar to how we coached our 10th grade boys team and our 3rd grade boys team this year. Basketball is basketball.  No matter the gender or age level… you shoot, dribble, pass and pivot. I keep things pretty simple and focus on player development.  So I […]

Filed Under: 5th grade basketball

What We Did With Our 3rd Grade Boys Team – Offense, Defense, Drills, Plays

March 3, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 33 Comments

Here’s what we did with our 3rd grade boys’ team this year.  You might be surprised that it’s very similar to how we coached our 10th grade team. Overview and Results For the sake of transparency, I’ll start by admitting our 3rd grade team is stacked.  Due to some luck and unique circumstances, we have a […]

Filed Under: 3rd Grade Basketball

What We Did With Our Sophomore Boys Basketball Team – Offense, Defense, Drills, Plays

February 22, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 7 Comments

In hopes of giving you some ideas and possibly helping your team in some way, I’m sharing what we did with our sophomore (10th grade) boys basketball team this year.  This includes our offense, defense, drills, plays, and so on. Brief Overview and Results For the 2015/16 season I coached the Marion sophomore boys basketball team. […]

Filed Under: 10th Grade (Sophomore) Basketball, Practice Strategy

Why Coaching from Stands Causes Confusion – And How to Stop Parents From Doing It

January 13, 2016 by Jeff Haefner 3 Comments

If you have parents that shout instructions to their kids from the stands, you probably already know that can be problematic. Nothing worse than a kid continually looking at their parents for approval during a game (instead of the coach) and often times the parent yelling instructions that contradict what you want. Not to mention it […]

Filed Under: team management

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About Me

I’m a basketball coach, skill development trainer, and Co-Owner of Breakthrough Basketball. I currently live in Marion, Iowa with my wife, two kids, and our golden retriever (Izzy).

Right now I am coaching two teams. I will be coaching... Read More...

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Most Popular Articles

  • 15 Basketball Tryout Drills for Efficiently Evaluating Players
  • Dynamic Warm Up For Basketball – Strength, Athleticism, and Injury Prevention
  • What We Did With Our 4th Grade Youth Basketball Team – Offense, Defense, Skills and More…
  • Simple Way to Define Shot Selection and Improve Offensive Efficiency
  • Coaching Youth Basketball – What We Did With Our 3rd Grade Team and Ideas that Might Help You
  • Trying New Drills – No Dribble is Still One of the Best

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