My 2013 - 2014 Travel Season Goals

My goal is to develop all of our players and to give everyone the experience needed to improve their game. You all know that I am looking long term. I plan to take THIS travel team and bring them up to compete on the national AAU level by the time our 7th graders are in high school.   

To that end I will play everyone who comes to practice as equally as I can. With youth players who do competitive cheerleading, play travel or club soccer and lacrosse, have Sunday religious or cultural activities and preform in the honors bands and orchestras, I decided to add 5 players to my original 8 players. This way I will have enough bodies every game. 

Note: While my original 8 have a spot on my team for the rest of their basketball lives, they, like everyone else, have to earn their playing time by meeting practice requirements. 

Not every player on our travel team has the desire to play at the highest levels of the basketball. The commitment and sacrifice that is required to reach the top is large. I get that. 

At this age it is in the best interest of the girls' athletic and social development to do multiple sports. I require multiple sports, music, Girl Scouts and various other activities of my own child, some of which will cause her to miss games and practices. 

My AAU coach friends around the country think I am crazy. They recruit top athletes and above average travel players from a large area to build a team. They rarely have two players from the same town. They pick players who do nothing but BASKETBALL. 

I just ask that during the winter basketball season that BASKETBALL come before every other sport. The rest of the year it is okay to put the Destroyers on the back burner as long as your player is doing a little basketball year round. 

From mid November to mid March attendance at two basketball practices a week is expected. One a week is required. 

The required practice will be where new concepts will be introduced and or challenges from the previous game will be ironed out. It will be the most important practice of the week and will be clearly flagged on TeamSnap. 

It is the practice that I would like every member of the team to attend so that everyone is prepared for that week's game. That is also the practice to which I will peg your daughter's playing time for that week. 

Like last year I will offer 3 and sometimes 4 basketball opportunities a week including scrimmages and practices with other programs and workouts with and against boys. The more that your player can attend each week, the better your daughter will play on Sunday. 

I will do what is required for each individual player to have the best possible opportunity to succeed in the long term. I can put the opportunities in the path of your daughters but I can't force the girls to take advantage nor can I force you to get your kid to the practices. 

I will do as equal as I can playing time for each regular season game for the girls who attend practices.  In the best case plan I would have limited the roster to 10 players and then rotated them in and out of the game every four minutes and everyone would play 16 minutes per regular season game.  With 13 girls each player will play about 12 minutes per regular season game.

I will also change the groups from game to game so every player gets a chance to play with each other, gets to start some games and everyone also gets a chance to close out some games. 

*Players who miss the mandatory practice before a game will play but not equally. They will be worked into the game in such a way and in such times that they will not disrupt the progress of the players who were at that practice to learn that week's new concepts. They may play only 5 or 6 minutes in that weeks game. 

When our team is entered in a tournament where we need to win a specific game in order to advance and keep playing, I will rotate players fairly equally in the first three quarters. Everyone who met the practice requirements for that week will play a minimum of 8 minutes split over the first 3 quarters, most likely in 4 minute shifts. 

I will play our current best players in the fourth quarter in the "life or death" games. The demarcation line for "current best" for me is when preparation, talent and athleticism meets an indomitable work ethic demonstrated by showing up for and working hard in most of the offered basketball activities in the week leading up to the tournament. 

I am not planning an easy season. I don't expect us to win much by doing equal playing time. It is easier to coach a team that wins more games than it loses. You parents are happy (or at least quiet) and your daughters are thrilled to train and play.

But it's a little different matter when we are on a losing streak such as we were during the summer league. Being beaten (stomped even) every week knocks down player confidence a bit. After we did so well in travel last winter, the girls and admit it, most of you parents, thought we were a good team. That is not the case. 

We will be a good team in time. This summer showed the truth because, for the most part, we were playing AAU teams and Division 1 travel teams. Humbling, wasn't it?

At practice this summer, we just focused on the basics. We practiced man to man defense, dribbling under pressure, passing, lay ups, catch and shoot. During the massacres, I gave the players simple objectives they could achieve in each shift during the games. When we achieved them, we called it good. I congratulated them and we partied, no matter what the final score was. 

Expect this winter season to be more of the same. I want to finish in the middle of the regular season standings and peak at the end of the season to make a run deep into the season end tournament.