Youth Basketball: Teaching Offense To 9/10 Year-Olds

I have consistently stated that I think 9 and 10 year-olds don't need offensive systems. They need to be taught fundamentals--how to move without the basketball.

When one player has the ball, the other four teammates should be moving with a purpose without the ball. This means cutting to the basket for a pass, screening away for another player or moving to balance the floor. This is continuous motion, and when the player with the ball passes, that player also joins the purposeful movement. The player with the ball is looking to pass, shoot or attack the basket. On offense, it's an unending cycle of cuts, screens and floor balancing movement.

If you teach these things to a 9 or 10 year-old, with everyone moving purposefully, in unison, you have offense. Some coaches either don't understand this or still want to have a set offense.

So, quickly, here’s my idea about how to win at 9-10 y.o. basketball—and it doesn’t require much teaching of offense. Go to my December, 2008 article on my website and get all the info.

www.top-basketball-coaching.com/9-10offense

Happy Holidays,
Coach Ronn

Youth Sports: Are They Really For The Youth?

There are still plenty of opportunities where parents decide what's best for youth sports and unfortunately, take the wrong direction.

There are places where parents think they are doing the right thing to prepare their children for varsity sports at some later date by creating elite youth programs where they hope their kids will become superstars now. Misguided as they are, they have missed all the documentation about how to create youth programs for the YOUTH-- not the adults. It's sort of like smoking. There is plenty of documentation about the ills of smoking but people still smoke--and even deny there is a problem.

This month I had to speak out again about how much is too much for small kids playing sports.

To read the article, go to: http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/youth+sports

Preparing Your Season—Leading Up To The First Game

Every season presents new challenges, however the biggest challenge, especially for new or newer coaches, may be in preparing to teach everything that will be needed in order to successfully play the first game.

Years ago, while at a UCLA coaching clinic, Coach Wooden stressed to us young coaches that our priorities should be conditioning, fundamentals, and then team play. The pre- and early-season plan must take that into account.

Do this by designing your drills for the dual purpose of perfecting a skill while building conditioning. Wooden told us that, “before working together as a team, we need to break every element of the game down into its basic parts, then begin to put the pieces together. Practice and perfect each part or the whole will not be successful. It requires hard work and repetition, always modifying, always correcting, until it all comes together. 'Practices are where championships are won'.”

The identification and perfection of details in the teaching of fundamentals sets the teaching-coach above the average coach. Any coach neglecting details regularly attended to by the teaching-coach is practicing to be unsuccessful. “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Doing the little things well makes the big things work. This is probably the teaching-coach’s greatest attribute for success.

To read the rest of this article, go to: http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/Preparing-For-The-First-Game

Yours in Sport & Spirit,

Coach Ronn

FREE HoopClinics For Coaches

Top-Basketball-Coaching caters to the beginner—the novice coach looking for how to get started and what to do in a sequential manner so the needs of the novice and less experienced player can be met.

I recognize that many of my readers and people who visit my site may be ready for more sophisticated information than I present. I am always on the look-out for a site that I think can deliver this kind of growth. I am proud to bring to you such a site—one I have recently partnered with.

Brian Williams and Josh Stinson contacted me and together we, along with a select group of other basketball webmasters, have partnered to bring HoopClinics to the world-wide web.

Go here to read all about it: http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/HoopClinics

I think you’ll be glad you did! 

Coach Ronn

Teaching Youth Basketball: Using The Other Hand

For many coaches of youth basketball , one of the key teaching points for beginners will be how and when to teach the use of the other hand--the non-dominant hand.

For beginners, the most important teaching of use of the weak hand will be for teaching dribbling. Teaching how to shoot with the other hand, especially shooting the lay-up or other finishing shots at the basket, will follow with age and experience.

To read the rest of this article, go to: http://www.Top-Basketball-Coaching.com/using-the-other-hand

Revisiting F.U.N.C.T.

It seems time to re-evaluate how we think and how we act, so we can live more spiritual lives.

For years, I have written and spoken about how sports are a great metaphor for life. The dynamic of how we deal with our participation in sports mirrors how we live our lives.

We are struggling as a society to make sense of all the changes we see all around in our outward lives. Our lives seem out of balance and with what is happening with the universe, time has been shortened. The resultant feeling is that we feel rushed, filled with angst and stress. This seems to manifest itself with the craziness we’ve seen in the news about aberrant behavior of coaches and parents.

For the rest of this article, go to http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/parenting

Teaching Basketball Basics

When a new basketball coach is attempting to put together a coaching plan of action, including how to teach, what to teach and when to teach it, who do they ask for advice? This mentoring should be of strategic importance to them. Do they really know how to teach what you need?

This is the message I bring for novice and inexperienced coaches in my June article, "Teaching Basketball Basics", which can be read at http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/teaching-basketball-basics.

While using your summer for planning, coaches could find the material needed for teaching the basics from the 28 products I have created and are showcased on my site, or the more than 40 basketball articles found listed on my home page, Top-Basketball-Coaching.com.

Yours in Sport & Spirit,

Coach Ronn