How to identify skills of youth players

Let me start by asking, What does team mean to you? And where would your emphasis be if you were given the duty to select a team – a basketball team! Naturally, to team up is to come together as a group to achieve a common goal. In the basketball sense, it has to mean to come together to win games and to win championships if there’s any – to achieve the greatest success there’s in a contest.

It’s just human nature that we all have different skill sets, that’s just how it is. Just as some are very good communicators, some very excellent leaders, some very creative and some just soldiers that just do it. This notion therefore totally applies in the basketball sense where every player has a different set of skills and it’s then the duty of the coach to engage the player’s skills in a way that’s productive to the team.

Much as we can always try to identify these skills through basketball drills and conditioning, I have found that this by far is not enough. In the context of youth basketball where a lot of my effort are going, i have discovered that’s important to take these youth athletes totally out of the sporting sense for you to discover areas where they excel, areas that can bring effiency to the team. The kind of activities i have employed in the past are the same kind activities that a company would employ for it’s team building or capacity building.

As good as drilling and conditioning players, I have grown to appreciate that players need to appreciate and understand why they’re doing each drill and they need to see its practical application. But what if you were to introduce an activity and just through observations discover their different skills?

At our Risingstars Basketball camp last December, we divided our campers into four teams , two teams comprising of campers of 11 years and above were competing against each other. Similarly, two teams of campers below 11 years were competing against each other. Winning teams were competing for UGX 20,000/=

Earlier, the campers had wondered why i had just walked into the arena with a heap of used newspapers. “What drills are these we gonna do that involve newspapers?” , Roland asked. But fast forward, when the time came, the task for the two teams of older campers was to build the tallest standing giraffe out of equally rationed newspaper and paper tape. The task for the two groups of the younger campers was to build the tallest standing tower out of equally rationed spaghetti and marshmallow. All teams had 45 minutes to plan and execute their respective exercises.

Without indulging into the drama of the exercise, we could tell a lot about every individual involved. We were looking for traits of; Creativity, Leadership, Planning, Teamwork, Individual excellence, Strategy development, Attention to detail, etcetera. And it’s impressive how much you can see from these kind of exercises. Ideally, both exercises cealed the need for strong foundations in building. As coaches, it’s something we wanted to highlight because we are constantly trying to emphasize the fundamentals as players want to move quicker into the ‘good stuff’.

By some stroke of luck, there was a storm towards the end of the exercise. The giraffe that was unstable came tumbling to the floor and the same fate was suffered by the tower that had had a weak foundation.

What was most important to observe though was how some campers stood out as project achitects. One Camper, Jacob, was just a start out at basketball, he didn’t have the finest skills but he had a huge design and leadership role played in his Team’s winning of the challenge. As such, Jacob is now the guy learning fastest and he is constantly looking to set his teammates free with screens.

Considering his basketball skills, Jacob could be seeing less minutes in a game. But based on his individuality, you can find a lot more ways to use those traits to advance the goals of the team. And the same applies to all the other traits of the different campers.

That said, not all traits displayed were positive. During the exercise some were critical or complaining, or wasteful or some just lacked the sense of the ambition which was to build the tallest standing tower or giraffe. These could be very skilled players but they’re not up to the task of winning the SHIP, they just here for the ride. Nonetheless, It’s very important for the coach to know who and what he is dealing with. One of my coaches once mentioned to me that, to be a coach is be a manager of egos.

I will be sharing some of my experiences as a youth basketball coach here so feel free to send your comments, additions or reductions. Let’s just grow.

Email me: cucubrian@gmail.com Or Let’s Tweet @Cucubrian.

BY CUCU BRIAN