To help with your transition to guard, I recommend that you start working on ball handling. Work on developing your left and right hand dribbling skills. Also, work on developing your shooting outside the paint. You don’t have to start at the 3 point line. You can start one step outside the paint..
Video Transcript:
Hey, this is Patosha for the Girls Basketball Trainer and I want to share with you five end of season tips. These are things that I’ve learned this past season as a sixth grade coach at Hutchison here in Memphis, Tennessee and I want to share it with you.
Set Goals
Maybe you are a coach and you can relate to it or maybe you are a player and I’ll talk about the tips from a player’s perspective, also. So, the first tip was set goals. Set goals, what are your expectations or have the expectations?
Never go into anything without knowing what you want to do. Basically, that’s what I did. I started the season off with expectations or goals of developing the players. It wasn’t necessary wins or losses. These are sixth graders and I think it was more important to teach them the fundamentals of the games than to be worried about how many wins or loses that we will have.
My expectations were teaching young ladies how to shoot, how to dribble, how to pass, how to make lay ups both left and right hand.
Learn from Losses
Things like that. And so, how to make free throws. Those were my expectations. Those were my goals for the season. Tip number two. Learn from the losses and this can be as a team or as a player, as a coach. Basically, we started the season off 1-2. And so, I had to think about what was going… What did we need to learn?
What did I need to teach the young ladies? What do we need to go over? Especially, still in line with what my goals were.
Basically, to be honest, I didn’t know what to expect with sixth graders. I hadn’t been around at games, sixth grade games. I didn’t know if the teams press. I did not know if they did man to man. I did not know if they did zone.
Basically, I had to go back and look at my loss to see well, what do I need to teach these young ladies right now to help us overcome these situations? And that’s what I did. We started the season 1-2 and we finished the season 11-5.
Keep It Positive
As you can see, we learned from those losses. The next tip is to keep it positive. Like I said, we started the season off 1-2. It could have been very easy for us and for me as a coach to get down, and think that I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. It would be easy for the young ladies to create a negative attitude and say, “Well, we suck.”
But, we didn’t. We kept it positive. I kept going into practices with motivational quotes.
I kept teaching the girls. I kept looking at the goals that we have, and I kept doing what I said I wanted to do, what my expectation were. Like I mentioned earlier, it really wasn’t about wins and losses but it’s hard to… When you are in a sport where it’s basically dictated on wins and losses to not have that concern but, we kept it positive and we kept improving.
I kept teaching the young ladies. They kept improving and they begin to win.
Don’t Take Extended Breaks
Lesson number or tip number four. Don’t take extended breaks. Basically, like I said, this is my first year as the coach and I didn’t really know what to expect, and we had a Christmas break. And it was a two and a half week Christmas break. Meaning the young ladies did not touch the basketball pretty much for two and a half weeks.
They weren’t around me for two and a half weeks. And so they lost the consistency that we had begun to have.
We were on a win streak but we begin to lose that consistency because we took that long break. When we came back from the Christmas break, everybody was rusty. And so, we struggled a little bit.
We had to get back into the form of things and back into our routines of things. And so that’s a lesson that I’ve learned, to not take an extended break. To stay in the gym either practicing or something. Being in a tournament, being in a holiday tournament or practicing or something, all right?
Develop throughout the Season
Tip number five. Develop throughout season and that was something that to be honest, I didn’t know. I didn’t really see that. We always talk about developing in an off season, using the off season to get better.
But, like I mentioned, my goals were to teach the young ladies the fundamentals of the game.
And that was something that I was working very, very hard on every practice. We were working on ball hand and we were working on lay ups. We were working on rebound. We were working on these things.
As the season begin to go on, the improvement basically begin to manifest and it was astonishing how the young ladies where to not even able to make a layup to making a left hand lay ups. To hitting threes. It was just amazing.
Don’t wait to the off season to try to get better. You can get better throughout the season. Take going through drills seriously. Stay extra. Come extra before… Come early before practice. Stay after practice. Use all the time that you have to develop and you will be amazed at how much you will be developing throughout the season.
Like I say, not just off season, but; throughout the season, continue to get better. And so, that’s it.
Those are my five end of season tips and again, set goals, set expectations for yourself for the season, before the beginning of the season. Learn from your losses even as a player. Learn, how did I defend this person. How did I go through this play? Look at how did I shoot my free throws? How did I box out and rebounds? Learn from losses. Keep it positive.
Stay positive throughout the season. Get you some motivational quotes. Say positive things to yourself. Stay around positive people. Just keep it positive when you hit that slump during the season, if you hit that slump.
Don’t take an extended break. You have a Thanksgiving break. You have the Christmas, New Year’s break. If you’re not playing on a tournament, get in a gym. Don’t take that break off. Develop throughout the season and like I said that’s something very powerful. Take your drills seriously when you go through drills at school.
Coming in extra, coming in early. Stay a little bit late.
And that’s it. I’m Patosha Jeffrey, the Girls Basketball Trainer and I hope you got something out of the Five End of Season Tips.
Please post a comment on this blog and let me know what you think about the end of season tips. Just scroll down to leave a comment. This should be your thoughts on what you heard in the video or other end of season tips you may have. I will be personally responding to the comments.
I sent an email out to my girls basketball tips readers asking How can I help you be successful?
Here are a couple of questions and my response:
Question 1: I was wondering if you had any tips for basketball team tryouts. I have a couple of tryouts coming up I the next week, and I would really like to know anything that might make me feel less nervous. I have practiced and trained all summer long and I think what I need are mental tips and ideas to make me stand out.
Write this statement on pieces of paper and put on your mirror in your room, in your notebook and in your locker.
“I’m prepared to Make the Basketball Team”.
Read it when you get up in the morning. Read it when you open you notebook. Read it when you open your locker.
Question 2: What can be done at the 3rd thru 6th grade level to prepare youngsters for the next level!
At that grade level, I would focus on ball handling with both hands, layups left and right and correct shooting techniques. Show them how to shoot free throws at their shooting range, just inside the free throw line.
That’s what I primarily work on for that age group.
Question 3: Curious question, I have a girls 12under program that I run. I wanted to see if you had anything on top of what I am currently doing that would help my pg’s dribble through contact instead of shying away. I have been successful with a new drill I created but I am always open to new ideas.
Something that my coach in college would do is bump us with a pad while doing layups..
Also, there are some drills in the Chris Paul Camp video that teaches the players how to play through contact and pressure.. It starts at the 17 second mark of the video..
Every once in a while you will encounter a bad game or a bad day. It just seems like nothing will go your way. Contrary to popular belief you can still look good during a bad game or day.
Since the July evaluation period is almost here. It is the perfect time to help you get prepared to showcase your skills to the college coaches and scouts you will be playing in front of.
None other than former college coach, ESPN Hoopgurlz’s Mark Lewis breaks down 8 ways to over come a slump.
Show them that you can still defend.
Show them that you can always rebound.
Show them that you won’t overreact.
Show them you can learn over the course of the game.
Show them that you have reading and math skills.
Show them that you understand time and clock management.
Show them that you’ve got focus and the right attitude.
