Saturday Weekly Tip: Find The Fun

Good Saturday To You.

What a great day for sports...great games, the Heisman award, and the greatest game ever played. If you are a sports fan it is a good day for you.

Today I wanted to share with you some what I beleive can make or break a youth program; Finding the Fun. What I mean by this is can you, during a practice or training session, find fun and exciting things that engage the athletes? If you can't, then I you are making your job harder then it should be and you are possibly making the training or sports practice less enjoyable for your athletes.

Yesterday, during the 5th and 6th grade intramural practice, we had a busy practice of practicing skills of all kinds. We focused on non-compartmentalized coaching. In other words, the athletes were made to perform many different basketball skills and athletic skills at the same time. Let me give you an example; one drill station the athletes ran after a long passand caught it, never stopping running, went immediately into a dribble, jump stop at the baseline, pivot, dribble back with speed and pass to the next person in line without traveling. Now, this may seem like a basic drill, but because we took the time to emphasis each part of the drill in order for the girls to understand how to control the ball plus their bodies it became a great multi-skill drill. We had many drills that were with the same concept of multi-skill focused through out the practice.

We found time to do something new. We had the girls play 2-on-2 at the six different baskets. This isn't so different, but what we did to give some excitement and competitive fun to the games was each game was playe for 3 minutes and at the end of 3 minutes the winning team stayed on the court and the other team rotated counter clock wise. Each game became competitive and when the 3 minutes were up and the whistle was blown to signal the end of each game...the girls were excited when they won.

The reason I had the girls play 2-on-2 was to have a time when the coaches and I could coach the girls on how to move and get open, how to make correct passes when a teammate popped open quickly, and how to defend both on the ball and one pass away. It was a time where the coaches could coach the girls and the girls could have fun because of the 3 minute time frame.
The objective was to take something we needed to do and find the fun in it.

If you look at the most basic skills and drills you do everyday at your soccer practice, tennis practice, volleyball practice, rugby practice, or any other practice you can make it into something fun and competitive. This keeps the kids emotionally involved, especially at the youth population.

So go out and HAVE FUN!!!

Yours in Speed,

Lee