This is Part Three of a series of an undetermined length. Remembering the details of a coaching experience that began about 30 years ago and continued for a little over a decade is difficult, but some of the personalities are beginning to come back into focus. In Parts One and Two, the “tryouts” , the draft, the preparation for the first practice and the first practice itself are covered. Part Three will cover some of the events that took place between the first practice and that long-awaited first game.
GOT THROUGH THE FIRST PRACTICE…EXHALE!
That first practice wasn’t so bad, but I vaguely remember second-guessing myself for not sticking to the original plan while trying to convince myself that Mr. Bullhorn (as he’ll be called going forward) didn’t bust up my agenda. (You know, the ego kicks in sometimes.) Fortunately those thoughts were fleeting and I managed to move on to thinking about what I’d learned about my roster and how I could incorporate those lessons into the next practice.
I’d already decided the second practice would be the last one opposite this other team, but I’d also take Mr. Bullhorn’s advice and purchase that Korney Board and whistle in time for the following Wednesday’s session. I also had to report to the gym that Saturday morning for the coaching certification course and general coaches meeting, and decided to do everything that day.
THE COACHES’ MEETING
On the Saturday after the first week of practice, an orientation session for first-year coaches (there were only four of us combined for the four age groups) was held where we went through the certification process. This was followed by a general meeting for all the league’s coaches (for every age group) for in-depth discussion about the rules, code of conduct, and other league policies. There were several coaches in attendance who had been involved with the program for several years but showed up for the orientation anyway; it later became evident why.
The certification portion ran for a couple of hours and ended with a very simple quiz. I already knew first aid, which they covered, then there was a video that featured examples of how to (and how not to) communicate with the kids. There were a couple of examples of a coach yelling at a kid about eight years old for making a mistake, calling him “stupid” while yanking him off the court by his arm.
One of the veteran coaches in the 10-and-under division was also a football coach, and he wasn’t feeling that video. As a disclaimer he admitted he didn’t agree with grabbing a kid by the arm, but he was a strong advocate of using verbal aggression as a way of “toughening these boys up.” He thought the kids in our program were “soft” compared to those in other municipalities. This led to a rather lively discussion amongst the coaches — who were about evenly split on the issue — and as we learned once the season started, not every coach got the message the video was attempting convey.
I vividly remember the portion of the video where a youth level basketball play was demonstrated: “Pick and Re-Pick the Picker.” It was shown as a sideline out-of-bounds play and it seemed like a good idea, but I also knew that even though we’d eventually need one, there would be a challenge explaining it to the less experienced kids. I took the name down for future reference, knowing it would be a couple of weeks before we’d get to that point anyway. Many of the coaches in attendance said they’d never use that play because they wouldn’t be able to explain it.
The other spirited conversation ensued as another veteran coach solicited a consensus to change the rule requiring each kid to play at least two quarters from start to finish. Evidently, the more experienced coaches disliked the rule because it hampered their ability to coach and hand down discipline to an unruly player. Nothing gets the attention of a kid (or even an NBA guy) quite like a reduction in playing time, but the risk of an inexperienced kid getting nailed to the bench was real, hence, the rule. I was OK with it, and it would be lifted for the post-season tournament, anyway.
Unfortunately, this would also require — in addition to monitoring your own team’s performance, substitution patterns, etc. — keeping an eye on the opposing coach and his adherence to the substitution rule. During the back-and-forth it was becoming more evident that I’d need another set of eyes on the bench, if only to make sure there’d be no shenanigans.
Mr. Bullhorn showed up later and got into a heated discussion with the league director about referees, specifically, getting new ones from a different association. He claimed to be a former referee at the NCAA level — a comment which would often result in some snide remarks from the other coaches — and felt many of the referees who worked our league games acted as if it were beneath them to officiate youth league games and were too often out of position to make proper calls. I’d actually gotten a preview of his disdain for officiating during our scrimmage. The conversation ended abruptly after the director told him to come up with the cash to pay for better referees.
Drama.
I did manage to have an informative conversation with one coach (we’d eventually become good friends) who’d been doing this for over a decade. He’d already coached in almost every division and rolled his eyes when I told him I’d be coaching in the 10-and-under division. “They don’t listen,” he said.
So after discussion with several coaches at various levels it appeared that each age group came with its own set of perils: the 8-and-unders all gravitate towards the ball, resembling a football game, the 10-and unders don’t listen, the 12-and-unders are looking at girls and the 14-and-unders think they know more than the coach does.
The meeting ended right after the league schedules were handed out. Mr. Bullhorn immediately comes over barking, “You get that Korney Board yet? You’re gonna need it when you play against me because I’m gonna wax you!”( It was the first time I’d ever heard the word “wax” used in that context.) I was hoping I wouldn’t have to face this guy the first week, and was relieved when I looked at the schedule and saw his team as the opponent for our fourth game.
I left that contentious meeting — which ran for about three hours — feeling every bit as exhausted as I did after the first practice. I then went to a place called Reeder and McGaughey to purchase the Korney Board and whistle, then went home and crashed.
This was getting much bigger than I’d anticipated.
THE SECOND PRACTICE – GETTING COMFORTABLE
I felt a bit more confident for the second practice, knowing that we’d stretch, run and work on fundamentals for the first 45 minutes, then scrimmage for the final 15 if the kids stayed focused. Once again I made the scrimmaging part contingent upon us getting through our practice agenda with minimal disruption, so I had the kids’ attention.
Sticking to the plan was crucial, because after this practice we’d be halfway through our allotted four before the season started, and I hadn’t decided on a real strategy yet. I was still getting familiar with my roster, hadn’t decided on a base offense or defense and hadn’t designed or copied a play. Just fundamentals and endurance drills.
During the second practice I got to know my players and their families a little better. My first-rounder was a quietly confident 10-year-old, a smooth ballhandler with a nice mid-range shot, and he rarely strayed outside his range. He was also deceptively fast, although it didn’t look that way at first. But his long strides allowed him to cover lots of ground. This would be my “go-to” guy for points. His father was very involved and turned out to be a second set of eyes on the bench for a few of the games while being very helpful with advice during the season.
My second-rounder was actually only eight-years-old when the season started. He could also handle the ball, was our best defensive player by far and had amazing anticipation skills for his age. He was also a good finisher at the basket but had limited range on his shot. He would definitely be playing away from the basket on defense for ball pressure and steals. He wasn’t a bad kid, but I could tell he was probably a handful for his teachers at school; he talked non-stop. He also had asthma, which would become an issue later.
My third-rounder was a nine-year-old described to me as a “knucklehead” by one of his former coaches. He was a natural as a dribbler and may have been the best athlete on the team, but I couldn’t play him at the point because he’d launch a three-point attempt almost every time he touched the ball. Even his mom could be heard saying, “Oh, my God,” after watching him toss up an ill-advised shot. The words, “they don’t listen” started ringing in my head after watching this kid play for awhile. He had the wavy hair, and several of the parents got a kick out of him showing up for practice and games wearing shades, even tagging him with a couple of nicknames. I still hadn’t met his father, who was supposed to be the “crazy” one.
The fourth-rounder was an interesting kid. He came from a great family who was very polite and supportive, and his older brother would always volunteer to help out with practice to give us an even number of players. This was also the happiest kid I’ve ever seen, and could be seen smiling even when we were running suicides. Talent-wise, I thought he could really help us as it was clear he was no novice, but I knew I’d have trouble getting him to keep his dribble below the shoulder and staying focused in general. This is also the youngster who made fun of my accent during the first practice.
The fifth-rounder was a quick study. He wasn’t very experienced but I could already see improvement from the first practice to the second. He was a left-handed kid who asked a lot of questions, and, based on the first scrimmage, didn’t mind skinning his knees to get a loose ball and was always moving when he didn’t have the ball. He just needed work on his offensive footwork; his defensive footwork was stellar. He also received a lot of positive reinforcement from his father.
My sixth-rounder was a nine-year-old who had never played before, and his parents mentioned it to me almost apologetically at the first practice. He was tiny and a bit timid, but could run like the wind. And he seldom said a word. This would be one of my pet projects. The seventh-rounder played one game in the 8-and-under division the year before , then broke his arm. That was the extent of his experience playing organized basketball. He was also nine-years-old with average height but extremely long arms. He also ran track, so he was already a fit.
So that was my team — small, quick, without a lot of perimeter shooting or height, but we’d be quick changing ends and it was my intent to make them defensively irritating. We had three ten-year-olds, three nine-year-olds, and one eight-year-old. I’d soon find out how important it was to have good ten-year-olds on your roster with this age group.
The second practice went very smoothly. I had my Korney Board (which helped immensely, by the way) and whistle, and one of the parents supplied the Gatorade. Everyone showed up, and everyone showed up on time. We ran and ran, then we ran some more. We did some competitive 3-on-3 rebounding and help-and-recover defensive drills, practiced lining up for free throws and shooting them, did some spot shooting and then had the kids dribble the ball while looking at my raised hand and changing the number of fingers I had up while they called it out, and switching hands when I did. Then I had the kids pair up and do the same, and they appeared to enjoy it. I watched to make sure they kept their dribbles low.
Then we practiced a three-lane fast break, the kind where the lane fillers actually cut to the basket instead of moving out beyond the three-point line.
We did some passing drills — the biggest challenge was getting them to put some “zip” on their passes and not tipping off where the pass was going. The inexperienced kids were picking things up rather quickly, and they remembered what we’d covered the week before with the rules (yeah, I quizzed them). Then I put them in a 1-3-1 offensive formation and worked on ball movement for a few minutes, and I had a couple of the 10-year-olds also make sure everyone was in the right spot, a responsibility they seemed to embrace.
The other challenge was keeping the kids focused as coach Bullhorn was at the other end of the gym with his team and berating them every couple of minutes. I caught a few of my players stealing a peek at the drama going on over there while I was explaining a drill we were about to do. I’d even thought of threatening to trade the next kid I saw not paying attention to me to that other team, but that seemed a bit cruel. Overall, I felt we’d had a productive 45 minutes of practice before we scrimmaged and the kids seemed to be having fun while learning. No disciplinary problems – at least not yet — and we completed our drills within the time allotted for each one.
SECOND SCRIMMAGE, MORE DRAMA
If bringing the Korney Board was a blessing, bringing the whistle turned out to be a curse. I went to the office to see if the staffer who officiated the previous week’s scrimmage would do it again this week. I’d seen him when I entered the gym that evening, but at this time he wasn’t in his office. I looked down the hall and checked all the open offices and there was no sign of him. Then I thought about the abuse he took the week before from Bullhorn and concluded this guy may have been hiding from us.
I came back to the gym and told Bullhorn I couldn’t find the staffer. “No problem,” he said, “WE can referee ourselves.”
Gulp.
Several thoughts immediately crept into my head. I’d never coached before and had certainly never officiated a game before, either, even a quick scrimmage. I didn’t mind doing it on this occasion, but I knew I’d end up pushing back against this self-proclaimed former NCAA official with a Type A personality, and the last thing I was interested in doing on this evening was getting into a back-and-forth, adult versus adult thing in front of all these kids, who just came to play some ball. I wasn’t the least bit interested in confrontation, but I could not let this guy — however well-intentioned he might be — push me around, either. That would have long-term consequences for me in terms of maintaining the respect of my players.
I diagrammed everything on the Korney Board — the offensive formation and movements as well as the matchups in our man-to-man defense, encouraging to kids to use the quickness advantage we had against these guys to play up-tempo, running a break off missed shots. I called out my first five (including the top two picks I’d started on the bench the previous week) and we were ready to scrimmage. I looked up and the stands were almost full. Most of the kids’ parents from both teams were there and some older kids who’d be practicing later had shown up early.
I was not expecting all that, but at least we were about to simulate — except for the officiating — an actual game. The gym actually had a little buzz to it.
The very first call I made was against one of Bullhorn’s kids, who caught a pass and ran about four steps backwards without bouncing the ball after one of my players ran up to him to play defense.
Coach Bullhorn was furious. “You can’t call that!!”
I responded, “I just did. It was an obvious travel, and I waited until the fourth step to call it.”
“He’s NINE years old!! NINE!!”
“Listen, calm down. When the season starts, those refs aren’t giving him four steps. You’ll thank me later.” Then he just turned and walked away, which surprised me.
Then I heard one of my players’ parents yell out, “Get him coach! He’s trying to intimidate you!” They already knew.
This battle between went on for the entire scrimmage, and I felt uncomfortable with it, but I felt better after the first one, and my kids (and their parents) would be watching to make sure I stood up for them. Meanwhile, in game action we were running the other team out of the gym, scoring at least the first ten points. The electronic scoreboard was off, but everyone knew what was going on, and our kids’ parents were celebrating after every basket. It sounded like a high school game.
The scrimmage ended and Bullhorn came over to shake hands and offered some more advice, which was greatly appreciated. However, I was hoping he wouldn’t ask to repeat this scenario the following week. He left before asking, and a couple of the parents joked that he didn’t want to play against us any more.
I asked the parents and kids to wait while I went the office to schedule the next week’s practice (because I didn’t want to make phone calls). The staffer I was looking for earlier to officiate the scrimmage somehow managed to find his way back to his office, and he greeted me with a smirk: “How did the scrimmage go?”
I ignored him and asked for the next two Thursday evenings (instead of Wednesdays), which we got.
I went back to tell everyone when the next two practices would be, but all the parents could talk about was Bullhorn. He’s a bully, he’s loud, he yells at the kids, he takes this too seriously, glad you beat him, etc. Then, in a strange moment, I actually found myself defending the guy, because he’d already been a great help — he just had his own style. I certainly wasn’t there to get into any personal battles with coaches, but it was clear that some of the parents didn’t really care for him or his style.
He was actually a cool cat once you got past the volume.
THE FINAL TWO PRE-SEASON PRACTICE SESSIONS
The third practice was fairly productive — we went through many of the individual drills and then during the second half-hour I showed them some action we’d be running out of the 1-3-1 zone offense, mainly pick-and-rolls between the more experienced kids, followed by a 1-4 set to isolate my first-rounder. Then I introduced a couple of zone defenses we’d go in and out of, hoping to confuse our opponents without confusing any of our own kids. We’d have about 10-12 minutes for free play — no scrimmage this time.
Then, right before we finished the structured portion of the third practice session, it happened.
The league director emerged from his office with a huge bag and called me over. Told me he had our uniforms. Remember, this was during the late eighties, and although he hadn’t started winning titles yet, Michael Jordan was already the Individual Flavor of the Moment and the Foreseeable Future. The director reaches into his bag of goodies and pulls out the navy blue uniforms with the name “Bullets” emblazoned across the front in white lettering, and I was praying there wasn’t a “Number 23” among them, or all heck would break loose.
Unfortunately, there WAS one. I thought the first-rounder would think he had first dibs on the “23” jersey, but being the quiet sort, he maturely walked over and found a jersey that would fit him, regardless of number. Meanwhile, the second-rounder snatched the jersey from the director and found himself in a tug-of-war with the fourth-rounder, with the already too big jersey being stretched even further. The parents and some of the teammates got a kick out of it, but I wasn’t amused.
“Let go of the jersey instantly, both of you, or neither will get it!”
They kept pulling, then they both suddenly forgot about the jersey and a brief wrestling match ensued, while the now stretched-out jersey ended up all by its lonesome nearby on the hardwood floor.
So this was my first real crisis. Everything had gone too smoothly, now we have two kids fighting over a jersey that was too big for either of them. I didn’t dare put my hands on either one, and I was praying their parents (who were actually friends) wouldn’t start fighting, too. Fortunately, they relented after I yelled at them to get off the floor and once they separated, I stood between them, praying I wouldn’t get hit with a haymaker. I told the other kids to shoot free throws while I sorted things out (we didn’t have replay) and talked to the two combatants. This conversation would cue me in on the type of discipline to be handed down.
We walked over to the stands, and after a few minutes of lecturing and threatening to suspend them both for the first game, they apologized to each other and shook hands, then they joined their teammates shooting free throws while I decided who’d get which uniform. It was based strictly on fit with no regard to jersey number. My second-rounder briefly sneered a bit when I handed him the number 50 jersey. And no one got the number 23, which was now probably too big for even me.
Both kids were smiling when they went back to join the other kids, and after speaking to them, then their parents, I decided not to do any suspensions (I was conflicted for a good while afterwards about that). One of the parents asked me what I’d said to them to get them in a good mood again. I had told them, “On my team, no eight, nine or ten-year-old kid plays with vertical, horizontal, or diagonal lines in their forehead. Only smooth foreheads will play.”
This was supposed to be fun, but kids will be kids.
There were no fights during the final practice, but there was a 12-and-under squad practicing on the other end of the court, then their coach walked over and in a low, calm voice, uttered the very words I was dreading to hear:
“Wanna scrimmage?”
Uhhmmm…I wasn’t keen on having my squad go up against a 12-and-under squad, but my players were giving me the “side eye” as if there’d be a mutiny were I to say no. We’d gone through our agenda, and the kids (even the new ones) appeared comfortable with our one or two offensive sets, we’d put in an inbounds play, went over the defenses and demonstrated the areas of the court where we wanted to trap, so we were ready to run up and down against a real team in lieu of free play. The weird part was that the other basket was 10 feet high while ours was at 8.5 feet. I needed to consult with the director and the parents before making a decision. Perhas I was being a bit too overprotective, but I was concerned about one of our kids getting injured. Neither the director or the parents saw a problem and the kids wanted to do it, so it was on.
The director agreed to serve as referee for the 10-minute scrimmage. I don’t know what the score ended up being, but my guys more than held their own against the older group, except we got destroyed on the backboards; couldn’t get a rebound. But we were able to run our offense with minimal dribbling, gave them fits on defense and ran a couple of fast breaks off misses and turnovers.
The scrimmage ended, the opposing coach came over and shook my hand had had some very complimentary things to say about my squad. My team and I then walked over to the stands and found some very excited parents who were proud of their kids’ performance against the sixth and seventh graders. The pre-season practices were done, we had our schedule and uniforms, and, in my eyes, the kids showed improvement every week of practice. We suffered no injuries and had just one brief scuffle. Those three scrimmages helped tremendously; I owed my raucous friend a huge debt of gratitude. I’d already learned a ton.
Early that following Saturday morning, our season would start.
NEXT: THE SEASON OPENER
