WEEK 16

As a coach, it is always important to remember along with pushing to make all the players that you coach better players in the sport of basketball, there is also another major factor that you need to ensure. We need to make sure that everyone is having fun and enjoying the sport. Sometimes coaches, including myself, forget that. We get caught up in wanting to make players so much better, that we might neglect to make sure they are having fun while being pushed to become better basketball players as well. You want to make sure there is a fair balance between the two; making the kids better players and making sure they’re having fun during the whole process. 

Every training session that I coach, I alway try to keep this in mind. For example, in one of the training sessions that I had with u12 boys and girls, part of the session was working on new dribble drive moves. The particular move that I was teaching the kids was an hesitation dribble, then lay-up at the basket. Initially, after demonstrating the move to the kids, a lot of them were still doing it incorrectly. I could also see that they were getting a little down on themselves because I was constantly correcting their mistakes. After seeing that my constant correction of their mistakes wasn’t really making an impact, I decided to take a different approach. This time I stopped everyone and told them, as they approach me (the “defender”) and they go into the hesitation dribble move, I want them to stop completely and make a funny face while shaking their heads, then proceed to the basket taking a lay-up. Every single one of them immediately started to laugh, when I demonstrated again what I wanted them to do (hesitation dribble while making a funny face). Just getting them to laugh made them feel relaxed. Because they were relaxed and were now enjoying the drill, they were able to nail down the hesitation dribble then lay-up at the basket.

That moment just reminded myself to constantly ensure that the kids are having fun along with you pushing them to learn and become better basketball players. But once again, its important to make sure that there is a fair balance between the two. You dont ever want the kids to be having “too much fun” that they dont listen and in turn makes it difficult to manage the training session. Just the right balance to make sure you’re getting through things, while the players are still having fun!

Thank you for reading my blog! Check in next week to see how things went! Take care everybody!

P.S. We’re (Titans) coming for you Ulster! Be readyy! See you Sunday!