Coaching observations

I just came back from one of my daughters practices and noticed a few things.


1) It seems everyone is a coach, especially parents. We coach in the car, in the parking lot, at home and on the sidelines. The only difference is that some of us do it more upfront and others are just more vocal.

2) One of the most underrated aspects of coaching a team is the concept of knowing your players. You can coach a bunch of players with quite honestly limited skill sets put together only once a week in the same manner as a provincial team of the most highly skilled players. Yet for some reasons some of coaches fail to realize that.

Physical vs Mental

Still no news on coaching.
I went to watch the provincial u17 girls team work out today and while they were amazing to watch I couldn't help to think how similar they are to the rest of the basketball players who play the game.

During one stretch near the middle of practice they were required to make 8 out of 12 shots as a team and yet they were unable to do so. So naturally the punishment was running and then do it again. This happened three times until the team finally made 11 out of 12 shots. A little later in practice they tried again but once again they were unsuccessful.

The coaches kep stressing the importance of keeping thier routine and not changing anything but watching the girls you could tell they were rushing the shots.

It was not a matter of themn being unable to physically doing it but more a matter of focus, focus , focus and more focus. There comes a time when your mental game has to be just as strong or perhaps even stronger than your physical game.

Shooting fouls shots for the elite player has to become a mental exercise and once they can realize that they will taking a step closer to being a complete player.