Developing a Training Program for Multiple Age-Groups

Q10- I have just taken the role of coaching coordinator for a junior basketball club in Australia. This club has 45 teams competing in Girls and Boys under 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 age groups. We also have are limited to one hour practice time with as many as three teams on a court at one time. Our season runs approximately 15 weeks in each summer and winter. I need to develop a training program for each age group which will satisfy the following criterion: 1 hour practice time Emphasis on the development of skills appropriate for each age level 15 weeks in length run by coaches who are still learning and in many cases are parents.  Can you give me some suggestions?

Damian Stock, Coaching Coordinator
Heathmont Hornets Basketball Club Melbourne, Australia

Coach Stock,
First let me catch my breath. It sounds like you want me to develop your whole program. While I have a substantial background in youth work, I am probably not the coach that can best assist you. I am posting your question here with the hope I can give you some general tips about how you might proceed, and by listing your email there may be other Youth Directors in clubs around the world that might have a well established structure that you can borrow off of to save yourself a tremendous amount of work.You probably have the toughest coaching job in the world. Too many teams, too little facilities, and very inexperienced coaches.

Here are my general suggestions to assist you in getting started.

• a) Contact other successful professional clubs in Australia or other countries, and get in contact with their Youth Coordinators. Most of them are coaches. If possible try to make a visit to their club and practices and see how they do it. You'll gain more ideas quickly this way than by reading any book.
• b) Second, pull your most experienced youth coaches together and get their input into what they can teach and what should be taught. This will server two purposes. First you'll know more about their background and experience, and you will probably gain some pretty good ideas about utilizing your practice time and facilities.
• c) Organize, organize, organize. Keep the amount of information and skills you are trying to teach to a minimum. Basics on passing, dribbling, shooting, defensive footwork, and make sure they all get some playing time. This is the most critical problem in International basketball. I thinks there are many talented young athletes in countries around the world, but in the majority of the countries, their youth have too little "playground" experience. This is where the countries like the United Stated, Italy, Spain, Greece, and the former Yugoslavian countries excel. Your task is a formidable one. You must achieve one overall objective for every player each day. They learn a new skill, or at least make a little progression, they have fun, and they get playing time. If they don't have fun, they won't come back. The motivation for a young person to keep practicing under these extremely difficult conditions will be based a great deal on how they feel about themselves. This self-esteem can come from something as simple as making a left handed lay-up for the first time, or completing a pass for a teammates score. Without this you'll never be successful in keeping the youth motivated to work through these conditions to the higher levels where they will get more practice time.

Get a monthly calendar for a whole year, and write out a master plan. Before you know what to teach to each of the 6 different age groups you need to know how many actual practices you have. It sounds like you have done this already. If you have, then attempt to practice just two or three skills a practice. Keep the drills to 10 minutes in length, and use every bit of space in the gym that you can. Stations will probably work best in this situation. Have 10 or 15 players practicing passing on a wall or to each other, while 15 are shooting on three baskets at one end, and 10 or 15 are working on defensive footwork at the other. I wish I had the time to go into much more detail, but I encourage you to contact other clubs to get assistance from coaches and programs already established.

• d) In terms of general things to teach. Kids in the under 12, 10 and 8 age groups should be working almost exclusively on fundamentals. By the age of 13 or 14 team concepts must be introduced such as team defense. They can be taught at an earlier age, but good concept doesn't mix well with weakly taught fundamental skills. A sure formula for failure. I generally got extra practice time for my youth players in Europe by having the better players practice up with the men's or women's senior teams. They might not be able to scrimmage but they certainly could participate in fundamental drills. This serves a second purpose of giving these age groups a clear picture of the intensity, skills, and time demands of playing at the higher levels.
• e) I would encourage you to find some parents or possible coaches in related sports to pick up your kids for an additional practice each week. In our club in Germany we had most of our 12, 10, and mini's in a track and field practice one day a week. They are learning how to run and control their bodies. They develop strength, and conditioning as well. There is always the risk you will lose some of them, but those players who love basketball will see it as an opportunity to develop basketball related skills.

I think this topic would be a good one for a book. You might consider checking out a book called Youth Coaching by Karen Grachow, Amy Dickenson, and Vern Seefeld which you can order through our Sysko's link on the Basketball Highway. This is a very in depth book on coaching young players. One of the best books I have ever read in developing youth basketball players is by a German Coach named Hans Nicklaus. The book is called Mini Lernen Spielend Basketball (Haguni Sportbibliothek). Unfortunately for non-German speaking coaches this doesn't help much, but I'm sure if you do some more digging around you can find something like this either in Australia or another English speaking country. Try contacting the Australian Basketball Federation, as I'm sure they probably have some good resources for this as well. Well, Coach I didn't teach the dog to roll over, but maybe I helped him to bark a little. I hope these give you some food for thought. Good luck with your program. Be patient, build one step at a time, and organize, organize, organize.

Thank you for asking the coach. The Coach