This is Patrick Colliton from 6528 Heather Brook Ct., McLean, in Fairfax VA and I am back with more coaching tips that I have picked up over the past seventeen years of coaching in Fairfax, VA. Today I want to talk about defense and the best way to coach defense to younger, developing kids and while I have the most experience in coaching basketball, the fundamentals of defense can be applied to soccer, lacrosse and actually, most sports.
What most kids and a lot of coaches don’t realize is that defense is played with your feet. The basic principle of defense is to stay between your man and the goal and in order to be successful, you need to position yourself properly.
There are several important factors involved with having the proper position;
1) You need to stay on your toes (hence the expression “Don’t get caught flatfooted.”)
2) You need to keep your butt down and always have good balance.
3) Your movement should always be step and slide, step and slide. You need to avoid crossing over your feet as there is no balance during crossovers.
4) Probably the most important factor to address is to make sure your kids overplay to the strong side.
By forcing a young player to his/her weak side or off-hand, you basically take away his/her strength. By positioning your defensive player one half or even one full step toward the right hand (in most cases) allows even the most modest athlete to have success defensively. I always tell my kids that you need talent to score but you need heart and smarts to play defense. Therefore, everyone can play defense.
As long as you can teach or explain these fundamentals of defense, you really don’t need to spend a lot of practice time on defensive drills.
My next blog will talk about how you can make defensive drills both fun and productive at the same time. This is Pat Colliton signing off from Fairfax, Virginia.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Pat Colliton's shooting drills from Fairfax
This is Pat Colliton from 6528 Heather Brook Ct., McLean, in Fairfax VA and I am back with more helpful hints on coaching youth basketball. Hopefully, my seventeen years of coaching youth basketball in Fairfax, VA makes this a worthwhile reading.
Repetition is certainly one of the main ingredients in one’s quest for improvement in almost any activity. While there is no denying that some people have a natural born gift for certain things, almost without exception, hard work is the key to one’s success for improvement.
The trick for coaches of young kids is how to get them to focus on the fundamentals or basics of a sport before they get bored or lose interest. One point to always remember is that you must keep your drill lines very short (3 or 4 kids max). This allows for two things; all of the kids get a lot of reps and also, no one has time to get bored and start trouble. Another key ingredient is to make up “team competitions” so that they can feel good about winning.
As you know by now, the low blocks in basketball are my favorite positions on the court. Everyone who plays the game needs to be comfortable “down on the blocks”. Shooting and making the shot from the low blocks is essential for overall success on the court. One drill that the kids love is breaking the team into two lines of 4 and then have a contest shooting from the blocks. Coaches need to keep all games moving, either playing for 30-45 seconds or the first team to make 10 shots. Two balls, two teams – GO. Game ends - so switch sides and go again.
There are a couple of important things to stress to the kids. First, they need to always use the backboard as this helps tremendously with their success. Second, they should always get ready to shoot the ball before they catch the pass, in other words, have their feet balanced and their hands in a shooting position (by their chest). The third thing to stress is to always follow your shot. It is one of the fundamentals of the game and it speeds the contest up and keeps everything moving. Finally they need to deliver a good pass to their teammate who has moved into the low block.
Shooting drills are the easy part of practice as everyone loves to shoot. Kids all love to shoot and even at a young age most will have good success from the low blocks. As the improvement comes it is easy to move the drill around to different spots on the floor, always keeping it close (inside the foul line).
My next blog will talk about how you can make defensive drills both fun and productive at the same time. This is Pat Colliton signing off from Fairfax, Virginia.
Repetition is certainly one of the main ingredients in one’s quest for improvement in almost any activity. While there is no denying that some people have a natural born gift for certain things, almost without exception, hard work is the key to one’s success for improvement.
The trick for coaches of young kids is how to get them to focus on the fundamentals or basics of a sport before they get bored or lose interest. One point to always remember is that you must keep your drill lines very short (3 or 4 kids max). This allows for two things; all of the kids get a lot of reps and also, no one has time to get bored and start trouble. Another key ingredient is to make up “team competitions” so that they can feel good about winning.
As you know by now, the low blocks in basketball are my favorite positions on the court. Everyone who plays the game needs to be comfortable “down on the blocks”. Shooting and making the shot from the low blocks is essential for overall success on the court. One drill that the kids love is breaking the team into two lines of 4 and then have a contest shooting from the blocks. Coaches need to keep all games moving, either playing for 30-45 seconds or the first team to make 10 shots. Two balls, two teams – GO. Game ends - so switch sides and go again.
There are a couple of important things to stress to the kids. First, they need to always use the backboard as this helps tremendously with their success. Second, they should always get ready to shoot the ball before they catch the pass, in other words, have their feet balanced and their hands in a shooting position (by their chest). The third thing to stress is to always follow your shot. It is one of the fundamentals of the game and it speeds the contest up and keeps everything moving. Finally they need to deliver a good pass to their teammate who has moved into the low block.
Shooting drills are the easy part of practice as everyone loves to shoot. Kids all love to shoot and even at a young age most will have good success from the low blocks. As the improvement comes it is easy to move the drill around to different spots on the floor, always keeping it close (inside the foul line).
My next blog will talk about how you can make defensive drills both fun and productive at the same time. This is Pat Colliton signing off from Fairfax, Virginia.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Pat Colliton's Coaching Tricks from Fairfax Virginia
This is Pat Colliton from 6528 Heather Brook Ct., McLean, in Fairfax VA and I am back with more inside information on coaching youth basketball. My seventeen years of coaching youth basketball in Fairfax, VA makes me a little bit of an authority on the subject.
The first thing coaches need to know when coaching youth sports is that regardless of how much experience you have or don’t have, you almost always know more than your kids, especially in those developmental years (grades 1-4). Hopefully your program has you playing small sided games (3 v 3)with a shorter basket and smaller ball. These are all vital if you want the kids to be successful.
One of the first things you will notice with the young players is that they all want to shoot jump shots. The further out, the better they like it. Basically it becomes a chuck and a prayer with virtually no chance for success. This is just not productive use of your precious practice time.
In order to give these younger kids a chance to succeed, I make a rule at the very first practice. That rule is “You need to make a lay-up before you can even attempt a jump shot.” (practice or games) Once you make a lay-up you are allowed to shoot a jumper, but if you miss that jumper, you need to make another lay-up before your next attempted jump shot.
This rule is actually pretty easy to implement and as long as you don’t get too strict with it, the kids will buy into it. I usually tweak the rule as the season progresses, allowing “bonus jumpers” for offensive rebounds and steals.
My next blog will talk about how you can make shooting drills both fun and productive at the same time. This is Pat Colliton signing off from Fairfax, Virginia.
The first thing coaches need to know when coaching youth sports is that regardless of how much experience you have or don’t have, you almost always know more than your kids, especially in those developmental years (grades 1-4). Hopefully your program has you playing small sided games (3 v 3)with a shorter basket and smaller ball. These are all vital if you want the kids to be successful.
One of the first things you will notice with the young players is that they all want to shoot jump shots. The further out, the better they like it. Basically it becomes a chuck and a prayer with virtually no chance for success. This is just not productive use of your precious practice time.
In order to give these younger kids a chance to succeed, I make a rule at the very first practice. That rule is “You need to make a lay-up before you can even attempt a jump shot.” (practice or games) Once you make a lay-up you are allowed to shoot a jumper, but if you miss that jumper, you need to make another lay-up before your next attempted jump shot.
This rule is actually pretty easy to implement and as long as you don’t get too strict with it, the kids will buy into it. I usually tweak the rule as the season progresses, allowing “bonus jumpers” for offensive rebounds and steals.
My next blog will talk about how you can make shooting drills both fun and productive at the same time. This is Pat Colliton signing off from Fairfax, Virginia.
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