ORGANIZING THE TEAM
The next step is to organize the team. How many players are there on the team? What will their obligations be? What internal working rules will be established? What resources are available (facilities, basketballs, uniforms, etc.).
INTERNAL WORKING RULES
Working rules are a key element in the organization of a team. As with the players obligations, it is advisable that these rules be few and very precise; they should be clearly defined and should not give rise to doubts, arbitrary interpretation or conflictive situations when applied. Obviously they should be suited to the circumstances and level required of each team, keeping in mind the level of commitment undertaken by the players or the level that can be reasonably expected of them.
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For example: Certain working rules can be established such as being ready to start the practice at the time agreed to, arriving one hour before the game properly dressed, taking turns collecting the balls at the end of the practice, etc.
Rules can also be set up for 6th grade & under teams, related to participation in games. For example, a rotation system can be established so that all the kids will play a minimum number of games throughout the season.
For these teams, it could also be appropriate to establish rules regulating the parents behavior, explaining the reasons behind these. For example, they should not tell the children what to do during games or sit on the bench with the team.
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Decide which working rules you consider most appropriate, keeping in mind the characteristics of your team.
RESOURCES AVAILABLE
The coach should know what resources they have available (courts, balls, uniforms, etc.) in order to make the best use of these, using their imagination to make up for shortages.
First of all, coaches should take advantage of all available resources. For example, if there are four hoops, it would be a good idea to use all four of them rather than just two.
Secondly, it is often the case when training young players that the resources are limited (few balls, little court time, only half a court available, outdoor courts, etc.). For these reasons, coaches in these categories have to use their imagination in order to make up for these deficiencies.
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For example: If only a few balls are available, circuits can be organized for different types of drills, combining drills with and without the ball, attempting to make drills performed without the ball especially interesting. Coaches should never simply resign themselves to a limited situation by lining up all the players in a long line to wait until they finally have a turn with the ball.
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This is the time to explore what other possibilities are available to make up for the lack of resources. For example, the team may only have the use of one court with two hoops tow days a week. The coach could consider the possibility of training a third day on a field without baskets, taking advantage of this sessions to do drills that do not require them.
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The fewer the resources available to the coach, the more important it is for coach to look for and find imaginative solutions to make up for it. A coach who resigns themselves to working with insufficient resources will not be a good coach for young players.
PLANNING ACTIVITIES
Planning activities (practice sessions and games) is an essential aspect of a coach's job.
Coaches who do not plan ahead tend to drift. At the beginning of the season, they are full of excitement, energy and confidence, they have great ideas and they want to do many things at the same time. However, as they move further into the season, their excitement, energy and confidence wanes, they run out of new ideas and the practice sessions become routine and less beneficial.
Whenever there is an important game, they tend to once again feel their initial motivation and once again want the players to learn many things at once, correcting every error in just a few training sessions.
When the competition is even, the coach who has not thought ahead lives from day to day, thinking only of the next game and forgetting to carry out the work needed for their players to really progress.
On the other hand, if a coach maps out their work they will have a useful overall perspective that will help them to objectively evaluate which aspects are the most important. From this perspective, coaches can make the right decisions and better organize the work that their team should perform.
HOW FAR AHEAD TO PLAN
A coach may plan for the long-term, medium-term and short-term, for several years, one season, from one to several months, for one or several weeks and, of course, each training session.
In a club made up of teams of different categories, it could be a good idea to make up a flexible, overall plan, covering several years for younger players and another or others for the older players. This way, the work of each teams coach will be defined within a general outline that will make more overall sense.
Whether or not a coach carriers out this long-term planning system, anyone coaching young players should keep in mind what their possible course may be in the future so as not to lose sight of what their daily work should be.
PER IODIZATION
Usually basketball coaches work with their teams for a season that lasts anywhere from 6 to 10 months. Therefore, they should plan for this amount of time, known as a macro-cycle or cycle.
Then, depending upon the specific circumstances of their team and the activities initially foreseen, they should divide the season into shorter periods defined by specific characteristics. These periods are called meso-cycles.
Later, coaches can consider 1 or 2 week blocks within each meso-cycle. These are called micro-cycles.
And finally, they should consider the unit that represents each practice session.
Each of these periods should be planned for in advance by the coach. Obviously, the outline for the longer periods should be more general and flexible in outlook than the more limited short-term periods.
In other words, the plan for the season will be more general then the plan carried out for each mesocycle, microcycle, and training session. The plan covering a mesocycle will be more general than that covering the microcycles and training sessions. And the plan for each microcycle will be more general than that covering each training session.
Therefore, the specific plan outlined for each training session should be situated within the more general context of a microcycle, which in turn should be situated within the even more general context of a mesocycle, situated within the yet more general context of a full season.
In this way, coaches will be able to make each drill performed by their young layers contribute more thoroughly to the overall goals of their improvement as athletes and their human development.
SETTING GOALS
This way, by looking first of all at the more extensive period (the entire season) and then at each of the remaining periods, the first thing a coach should do is decide what goals their team should meet both collectively and individually within that period.
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What should our goals be as a team, this season? Within this mesocyle? Within this microcycle? Within this training session?
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What should each players goal be for this season? For this mesocycle? For this microcycle? For this training session?
The goals are the ones that the team and the individual players should achieve throughout the course of the season, thus defining the course of the coach's work.
OUTCOME GOALS AND PERFORMANCE GOALS
In order to establish the goals for each period of the season, the coach should make a distinction between outcome goals and performance goals.
Outcome goals refer to collective or individual results, such as for example, winning he league, obtaining more points or reducing the number of personal fouls. These goals may be divided into two types:
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Intra-subject or intra-group outcome goals. This refers to a player's or the team's results with respect to themselves, for example, the number of points made by a player (intra-subject) or the number of points made by the team (intra-group).
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Inter-subject or inter-group outcome goals. This refers to a players or the team's results with respect to other players or other teams such as, for example, being on the starting line-up (inter-subject) or winning a game (inter-group).
Performance goals include team or individual behavior, the way the players should behave in order to achieve the desired results. For example, improving a chest pass, dominating two-step stops, shooting more often from specific positions on the court, blocking defensive rebounds or playing with the low post.
Fulfilling performance goals does not guarantee outcome results but does increase the probability of achieving the latter and is the only possible controlled route for achieving them.
In general, outcome goals work better at enhancing the player's interest, but performance goals are better at helping the players to understand that they can control the situations with which they are faced.
Both types of goals guide the coaches work and help to strengthen the players motivation but outcome goals, especially inter-subject or inter-group outcome goals, can be very stressful (and therefore negative) for younger players.
In general, it is advisable to combine both types of goals depending on the players age group, keeping in mind the following:
- Inter-subject and inter-group outcome goals are advisable basically for teams made up of 15-18 year olds and, to a lesser extent, for teams made up of 13-14 year olds. They are not advisable for teams younger then these age groups.
- Intra-subject and intra-group outcome goals are advisable for teams made up of 15-18 year olds and 13-14 year olds, and sometimes for older younger teams (10-12 year olds).
- Individual and collective performance goals are highly recommended for all teams.