Our Summer Improvement Plan

Our summer improvement plan involves several key areas.

First, we will focus on critical fundamentals on which to build our skill development. Skills are acquired through intentional focus and repetition. Summer will be about shooting, ball handling and defensive skills.

• A serious player will work on these about 2-5 hours per day depending on ability, age and specific goals. You will not get better only working on basketball when you are with the team twice a week.

Our second focus will be on the development of Basketball IQ, specifically understanding the game and learning how to react to what is in front of you. We will play lots of one-on-one and three-on-three to provide everyone more touches with the ball. Five-on-five is one of the slowest ways to build skills because of the simple mathematical reality that players get less time with the ball. We will not do much 5-on-5 it during summer sessions.

Third, we will do specific physical training to build strength, quickness and vertical jumping.

• Bring your jumprope to every session.

Fourth, we will develop individual plans to work on confidence and mental toughness. Mental toughness is a crucial separator between good and great athletes.

• There will be reading assignments and written homework.

If you are not working on your basketball skills this summer, you are hurting your team and eliminating the opportunity to get extra minutes in Travel season games. While I require everyone to learn every job, we can not ignore that height is an important criteria for basketball players. Statistics show that the combination of height and ball-handling skill accurately predicts a player’s ability to play at higher levels over 90% of the time. When you add shooting skill the predictive level increases to over 95%. Since you can not control how tall you are (or will end up), you MUST work on your ball handling and your shooting. YOU are in control of your effort.

Whether players and parents like to hear it or not, height IS a factor. Players that are tall AND skilled are extremely valuable. Players that are shorter have to possess a higher level of skill (particularly ball-handling and shooting) to be on the court in high school and college. Players and parents need to recognize that if a player lacks height, then practice needs to be increased on skill work, and if a player does possess some height, that height is not sufficient on its own to guarantee playing at the next level where as great ball handing coupled with excellent shooting will.

I believe that it is important to measure early for skill and to do it often and objectively. Measurement brings accountability, and accountability drives rapid improvement. It is my goal to instill a culture of constant measurement and improvement and use objective testing to see who has the desire to work hard. Skill development is an important first step. I will track things in practice (hustle plays, + – stats in scrimmages, athleticism factors, etc) and continue to track stats and adjust goals in our games.

Summer is the time to develop new habits including mental toughness. This year we will work on climbing the mental toughness ELM tree - Effort, Learning and Mistakes.

• Always give 100% Effort (regardless of the outcome on the scoreboard).

• Constantly strive to Learn and improve. This involves you comparing your own performance to only your own performance (i.e., are you better than you were two weeks ago?).

• Mistakes are an inevitable part of the basketball and are needed to help you learn. Mistakes often result from pushing the envelope, taking chances, stretching limits, growing and learning.

If you are giving 100% and trying new things (as you strive to improve), mistakes are bound to occur, and you must learn to quickly bounce back from your mistakes.

When you make a mistake brush it off. Move on to next play! Let it go. No sweat. Flush it. Focus forward. NEXT play. Shake it off. Bounce back from setbacks.

Create a Self-Control Routine. 

It helps to have -- and actually practice or rehearse -- a self-control routine. Here is an example:

• take a deep breath
• remind yourself of the discipline required NOT to react
• engage in self-talk ("I need to be a role model. I can rise above this!")
• turn away from the action
• count to 20 (or 50!)
• try to return to enjoying the game and cheering on your teammates
  

What are your goals for playing Basketball? You have 100 points. Divide them between the goals listed below.

_________ Become a good athlete

_________ Learn to play the sport

_________ Learn teamwork

_________ Win

_________ Gain increased self-confidence

_________ Learn to deal with defeat

_________ Physical fitness

_________ Learn “life lessons”

_________ Have fun

_________ Make friends

_________ Earn a college scholarships

_________ Other (specify: ____________________________)

_________ Other (specify: ____________________________)

_________ Other (specify: ____________________________)

Share your goals with a parent, a teammate and your coach. Then put this sheet in your playbook.

You can download a PDF of this homework here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10279874/summer2014.pdf