How much is too much?/A lot of fun

As many of you know, I coach girl's basketball. Well, I sort of coach girl's basketball. Today, I'm going to go out on a limb and put in print some feelings I've been having because one, I don't think anyone who would take offense will see this, and two, I'm not sure if I care if they take offense because it would be because, "the truth hurts." You see, our varsity team is 1-5 right now to start the season. Their losses have been by an average of about 25 points. It hasn't been pretty. In fact, it's been quite embarrassing. There are too many problems to count but, in the end, it comes down to one thing, practice. It's not that we don't practice but that we don't practice well. Very little of that is the fault of the players. They share in the blame but the majority of it comes from the coaches. Our practices start off with the same thing every day; lay-ups and jump-shots. It's a drab routine that is not improving anything. We then move to another drill that, once again, is not improving anything because the head coach seems to just be on cruise control for the first 30-45 minutes of practice. It's been so routine like this that when we finally changed it up to a different drill this past Monday after the lay-ups and jump-shots, you would think the girls' heads were going to explode. It was like they didn't know how to do anything else without following that same routine. Another problem with our practice is that we do not spend any time working on the small things; ball-handling, passing, rebounding or man-to-man defense. Thus, we do these things very poorly in games. Also, when we work on team-stuff, only aabout half of what we work on actually is used during the game. For example, on Monday we spent a good bit of time working on our full-court press but never used it in the game last night. The head coach is upset because the team isn't intense and doesn't do the things necessary to win but the problem is that we haven't been preparing them in a way that breeds that attitude. I spend a lot of time biting my tongue because, in the end, it's not my program but how long to I sit and watch a team get run into the ground over and over again before I step and say something? We'll see if I can make it through the season without biting my tongue off.

On a more positive note, our JV team lost by three points in double overtime last night. It was the funnest game that I've been a part of this season. The girls never gave up. They kept fighting till the end but just couldn't pull it out. I was very proud of them and their effort and could do nothing but laugh and say how fun the game was. That's what it's about. You work hard to prepare so that you can, at least, put yourself in a position to win. Doing that and playing up to your potential is the fun that comes in the end and, as a coach, it's a lot of fun for me to watch that. Of course, it was a lot funner last year when I was coaching a freshman team that went 25-3 last year and did anything I asked them to do. I look forward to having another opportunity to coach a team the way I want to coach them.