Youth Basketball Practice, 3 Keys to Having a Great Practice

For all coaches, especially new or inexperienced coaches, how you manage your practices will determine how much your players will pay attention, learn and implement your ideas. Youth coaches have one added issue confronting them. You will often have a player who has never played organized basketball, thus creating the need to keep things basic.

Here are 3 keys to having a great practice.

1 ) Time Management.

All coaches feel as if they don't have enough practice time. If you have a 90 minute practice, all must have an accounting of all 90 minutes. Each drill should have a set time limit as well how much time for breaks. Make sure you leave enough time at the end for scrimmages.

2) Make It Fun

Most kids at the youth level play because it's fun. It's another game to them. Others who are more serious still need coaching that holds their attention. What better way to do this than making it fun?

This begins with you. If you speak in monotones without any excitement, your team will respond accordingly. I don't mean yelling at the top of your lungs as if you are hosting one of those infomercials, but you have to be a bit animated.

What also has helped me in the past is to make each drill competitive. Divided them into 2 teams, and have each team cheer for their teammate as a criteria for extra points. The losing team runs an extra drill like suicides while the winning team watches and also cheer them the other team running the drills.

The above is a great team building exercise.

3) Keep It Simple

We all have visions of diagraming plays various defenses. Sometimes, we are our worst enemy. For time management purposes as well as keeping practice fun, we must keep it simple.
Teaching the fundamentals of dribbling, passing, defense, and shooting will take up most of your time and must be kept to as simple as possible. If your team can perform the aforementioned basics, you will have prepared them for higher level play, such as high school.

Follow these 3 keys and your practices will be a blast.

Coaching Surprises, What I Learned From My U-11 Team

Last year I was coached a U-11 girls basketball team for rec league. Our games were once a week and we had one practice a week for 90 minutes.

There were 8 players on my team with 4 of them playing organized basketball for the first time. Thus, you understand how much fundamentals were a large part of practice sessions. I actually held back on what I taught them beyond the basics of dribbling, passing, defense, and shooting layups.

What I held back on was defense. Figuring it was easier to teach zone for our limited practice time, we actually became a very passive team. The reasoning being it was easier for them play an area rather than playing a man or girl even though were doing slide and other man-to-man drills.

After 4 weeks of getting blown out in a few games, and watching the girls stand around as if they were spectators, it became evident something had to change. Luckily, the girls were like a sponge when we started implementing man-to-man defense.

Wow! What a revelation! The girls, especially the new players, understood sticking your man and guarded them with fervor. We actually started winning games, which wasn't the main focus, but they added another aspect to their game that will carry them a long way in the future.

Guess what?

No matter the level of play or the limited practice time, my teams will never ( I know never say never) play zone again.

So what I really learned is that our youth can learn whatever thrown at them as long as they understand and see themselves getting better. All of our m2m drills were competitive and rewards were given to the winners of the drills.

What we actually did was make it fun! Remember, when you coach teams under 13 years of age, learning must be fun for them.

Yes, this article is primarily advertisement for m2m defense. They can learn zone in high school, but their m2m skills will allow them to play any type of defense.