SCHOOL HOLIDAYS. The kids favourite time of year, teachers are relaxing but Basketball coaches suddenly are facing multiple beady eyeballs at Holiday programs, clinics or large group training sessions.
These sessions can often be in shared facilities and set up time can often be really tight before sessions or between. As a coach you have to make sure you have a planned program that;
- Flows for both participants and coaches
- Has high levels of engagement and minimal downtime
- Maximises the facilities and equipment you have available
If you can nail those three things then you will be able to deliver a session that is enjoyable for everyone and creates the best environment for player development.
Role Specific sessions
One way to both separate groups and educate players is to have stations themed around positions or skills. Some ideas are Finishing around the rim, passing and moving, defending in different scenarios.
The advantage to this is players become multi positional, learn skills relevant to the game and coaches can use it as a progression building point.
Even in small court space, you can achieve outcomes as long as you are smart with your drill design. In all scenarios you can add outcomes on both sides of the ball which allows you to accommodate more players.
None of these sessions should be heavy on tactics, instead focusing on players getting the ball in their hands, learning through play, exploring different ideas and most importantly having fun.
Tournament and Challenges
You can engage large groups by introducing points for completion of tasks and challenges. If you are running the same challenge on multiple courts you can introduce promotion and relegation.
You can also have theme’s. For example, if the theme is shooting, you could have a court where you get double points for swishes or a special double point shooting square.
One of the main benefits of this is the players don’t spend time moving between drills, they are just running between courts. It is an easy way to ensure lots of time being active.
Roundabout coaching
No, it doesn’t mean players running around in circles. What it means is the coaches base themselves at one station and deliver it multiple times to different groups as the players move around but with different starting points. Obviously this means players again get to experience more skills and greater experiences.
It also means they hear different voices and potentially different coaching styles which might resonate and have a greater impact with them.
These sessions can be tweaked to also include focuses on skills that kids are potentially already really strong at with a aim for them to become better at what they are best at.
You could also have a theme for your roundabout and have each station working around a single theme. Again the players will gain a lot more knowledge but all contributing to one skill.
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