A Coach's Diary

GREAT READ FOR YOUTH COACHES.  THIS WAS COPIED FROM A BASKETBALL PAGE ON FACEBOOK AND WAS WRITTEN BY A HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS BASKETBALL COACH. ..... I know a lot of you ask about the specifics of strategy and ask about plays and drills and what not. But allow me to make a plea from us high school coaches who will get these young players you are currently coaching. PLEASE HELP THEM LOVE THE GAME. Whatever that means, at the end of the day, and by the time they move on to high school they still love the game, then from our (high school coaches) perspective you have done your job.  I say this because I cant tell you how many freshman we get who come into our school who played in junior high but didn't have a good experience or didn't like it and are not excited to play high school. Dont get me wrong its nice when incoming freshman have been taught to play ball and know the game, but more often times than not we need kids who are eager to play and grow their knowledge o...

Sabrina Ionescu has been smashing all kinds of records in the women’s college basketball world and has become a great ambassador for the women’s game.  She recently spoke at Kobe Bryant’s memorial and her speech was moving and inspirational.  Here is a video of the speech, and below is the transcript from the speech. “Growing up, I only knew one way to play the game of basketball: fierce, with obsessive focus. I was unapologetically competitive. I wanted to be the best. I loved the work, even when it was hard, especially if it was hard. “I knew I was different, that my drive was different. I grew up watching Kobe Bryant game after game, ring after ring, living his greatness without apology. I wanted to be just like him, to love every part of the competition, to be the first to show up and the last to leave, to love the grind, to be your best when you don’t feel your best and make other people around you the best version of themselves. And to wake up and do it aga...

Once you get to the competitive level, you realize that continued sports success is as much of a grind as anything.  It's a grind on the athlete, the parents, and the family as a whole.  The second you stop working or slow down, somebody who is working harder will catch up and pass you by. There is a top 5 high school girls basketball player who said, 'There are a lot of girls who were good when we first started playing on the circuit who aren't as good now.  You could tell who was working and who wasn't.  The ones who were working hard are still going strong.' I know there is a range of people who follow us here, from younger athletes and parents to those in the middle of this grind.  It is important to pace yourselves early but to understand that to make it to college, the pros, and to the elite of the elites, it is a grind and that takes talent, effort, mental toughness, grit, and some luck. There is nothing easy about being great at anything,...

I am a girl dad, and I coach all of my young daughters in multiple sports.  Someone once asked me why I thought playing sports were so important for girls.  I said there are so many things that I love about sports personally and I love the many life lessons that my girls learn by playing sports. Discipline - Doing what you are supposed to do when and how you are supposed to do it. Preparation - Showing up every practice prepared and ready to work. Grit - The ability to deal with adversity and keep going. Focus - Being able to stay in the moment at practice and at games. Teamwork - Being able to work with others toward a common goal. Making friends - We call our teammates our friends.  When we get a new teammate, we say we have a new friend. Public speaking - Every first practice and every time my young team gets a new teammate, we go around the room and tell our name and where we go to school.  We learn how to speak up snd use our...

I was at the gym when a group of girls, had to be 3rd or 4th grade, were getting ready to play in what I found out be their championship game. On one end, 6 girls from one team were there.  They were playing around.  Practicing their dribbling and playing keep-away.  They were smiling and they were happy.  'This is what youth sports should be about,' is what I thought to myself. On the other end was one girl from the other team.  She was shooting layups.  She wasn't really smiling; she wasn't smiling at all.  She had a different look; she had a focused look.  Her dad came up and started rebounding for her.  She did some layups on one side, then he pointed to the other side and she started doing lay-ups on the other side. It was funny because then I saw the other parents start to slowly look down at their daughters' competition.  They stopped smiling so much and their conversations started to slow.  You could see it in their ey...

Confidence in the game comes from putting the work in during practice and on your own.  If you put the time in doing something over and over again in practice, you will feel more comfortable performing that skill in the game. But if you really want to get ahead, don't wait until practice to work on your game.  Work on your game BEFORE practice and OUTSIDE of practice so that when practice starts, you are better and more ready to perform the drills and more ready to compete. Change how you look at practice.  It is a chance to work on your game, it is a chance to improve how you play as a team, but it is also a chance to COMPETE, and anytime that there is a chance to compete, you want to make sure that you are ready and prepared to perform. NBA legend Kevin Garnett recently said that he would get to practice 30-45 minutes early to work on stuff on his own.  Then he would practice with the team.  During practice, they would COMPETE with each other...

ATHLETES: When your coach is pushing you and is demanding more from you and you don't know why, just understand that your coach is trying to help you get to a new level and to play at a new level. Coach Cal said that his job is to make his athletes uncomfortable.  That means not coaching them where they are now; it means coaching them to where he sees they need to go and where they are capable of being.  This means that they have not been there, which means they will be uncomfortable all of the time.   He says that their job is to learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.   He sets up situations where they struggle so that they learn how to deal with it.   He sets up situations where they are feeling pain, whether its through conditioning or anything else that takes them to their limits, because it's how they learn about themselves. They just continue to raise the bar, and it doesn't mean kicking, punching and s...