Jeff Haefner's Coaching Blog

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Why You NEED a “Team Identity” and Important Club Guidelines for Developing Players

November 1, 2019 by Jeff Haefner 1 Comment

This winter I’m coaching a 7th grade boys Iowa Prep club team.  My son Evan is on the team. I’d like to share what we’re doing — and what I consider to be important aspects of both winning and player development… What I Consider to be Good Club Guidelines for Developing Players Iowa Prep is […]

Filed Under: 7th grade basketball, Strategy

How to Make a Positive Impact On Your Players – 7 Aspects of Teamwork and Character We Will Focus On

November 17, 2017 by Jeff Haefner Leave a Comment

Many years ago, when I played sports, I learned numerous valuable lessons that stuck with me. For whatever reason sports resonated with me. Looking back, I was passionate about sports. I believe that passion is primarily why sports served as a medium for me to learn so many lessons. It was important to me. I […]

Filed Under: Positive Impact

Posted 3 New Articles / Drills

April 29, 2017 by Jeff Haefner Leave a Comment

I wrote and posted some new articles, drills, and videos on Breakthrough… How to Minimize Game Slippage — 8 Ways to Minimize Game Slippage 1v1 Overlap Drill – How to Make 1v1 Drills More Efficient With One Court Also, posted this one several weeks ago and forgot to mention on my blog… 2-1-0 Dribbling Drills […]

Filed Under: Practice Strategy

How Often Should You Change Drills?

January 4, 2017 by Jeff Haefner 7 Comments

Do you use different drills to give players variety?  Do you use the same set of drills all season?  How often should you change your drills to keep things fresh? These are questions all coaches ask at some point. Here’s how we make our practices efficient and how often we change drills… For our 6th […]

Filed Under: Practice Strategy

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 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

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 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

How We Came Up With Our Team Core Values This Season

January 5, 2016 by Jeff Haefner Leave a Comment

We tried something different this year.  We let the players come up with the core values and character values that we want to emphasis this year. Here’s how we came up with them… First we had a meeting to brainstorm ideas.  BTW, this was our 10th grade boys team.   Players came up with ideas and […]

Filed Under: Positive Impact, 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…
  • Trying New Drills – No Dribble is Still One of the Best
  • Coaching Youth Basketball – What We Did With Our 3rd Grade Team and Ideas that Might Help You
  • What We Did With Our 5th Grade Girls Team – Offense, Defense, Drills and Plays

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