The FADS Why

Let me tell you why I do what I do. I started FADS because it is in the best interest on MY child.

I am putting my energies into Framingham girls graduating in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Girls from the surrounding towns are welcome along for the ride.

I assisted the Framingham school district's girls 8th grade travel team last season. They recruited at the three public schools. Six players came to the first try out. We requested that they bring a friend to the next one.  If a kid could breathe she made the team.

We ended up with 15 players - FIVE had rec league experience, the rest had never played organized basketball before. I used my 5th grader as a practice player so I had some one to help demo the skills.

Remember my 6th grade travel team? It was 8 players. I had 3 - 6th graders, 2 - 4th graders and 3 - 5th graders. Four had not played organized basketball before. I had to do my recruiting on the soccer field to have enough players after try outs to field a team.

I was shocked. For the Framingham travel try outs 5 girls TOTAL in 4th, 5th and 6th grades showed up. Zero came for 7th grade. Ten came for 8th grade.

I plan to take my travel team, a rag tag bunch of Framingham girls, and bring them up to compete on the national AAU level.  I have to! Otherwise with whom will Tayja play in high school?

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.

My approach is a little backwards, maybe, and I think it is the right thing to do for MY CHILD.

Tayja is the best 11 year old basketball player - male or female that most people will ever see. I hear that over and over again from referees, pro trainers, college coaches and high school coaches. By the time she is old enough to play basketball in high school, it is my goal that she be a complete player. IF she is still loving basketball, she will be special.

I make sure that SHE takes it all with a grain of salt. She knows that hard work got her where she is and that slacking will not get her to her goal of being a college point guard. Already this summer she has MADE over 7,000 <seven thousand> shots. MADE! we do not count the misses. We don't have a hoop at our house. Shooting involves Tayja organizing a ride to somewhere with a basket at 7 am most days.

She is very good because she works at her skills every day. She is willing to play with ANYONE no matter their skill level. I love that she believes that her role as a Complete Player is to make her team mates better. I do all I can to foster that and make it a focus of all team work.

I also want her to keep her joy and her unselfishness while growing her game.  I do that by surrounding her with positive team mates who have positive parents. The basketball I can teach. The court vision and leadership will come with more experience on the basketball court.

The positive team mates is the hard part. That is where all parents can help me.

A child cannot truly enjoy the basketball experience if the parents are negative at home. Players listen and absorb what the parents say and carry the emotion of home into the practice and games.  If the parents are “killing” the other players or the coach, the player cannot help but to be impacted.

The negative impact steals the joy from the game, ultimately hurting the team.  When the atmosphere is positive and encouraging those attitudes are reflected in the energy, enthusiasm and effectiveness of the players.

Every player faces the temptation to turn her focus toward herself and away from the team. The decision to turn selfish is generally prompted by a well-meaning family member looking to encourage. The “disease of me” can affect any player and great players tend to get it the quickest. A player with a bad attitude is a cancer to a team.

The travel team that I have now is a great mix of kids and parents. I have to be careful not to introduce any cancer.

Of course, one cannot promise that when players (and parents) channel their energies into making the TEAM the best it can be, regardless of the player’s role, that everything will work out perfectly.

While I don’t think a coach can create chemistry other than trying to add pieces to a team that she knows will mesh well with each other, the best coaches get the players to buy in to the team concept and chemistry is created. At this level, it starts with the attitude of the parents.

The rules of the game of basketball allow only five players on the court for each team at a time; therefore, even with equal playing time in a team of 12, a majority of the team will be on the bench during a majority of a game.

Everyone is essentially a “bench player." I am first and foremost an equal playing time coach. Games before High School Varsity are strictly developmental. They don't mean a thing so everyone plays. During the regular season Tayja logged the same number of minutes as my "has never played before" 4th grader. During the play off NO ONE played less than 10 minutes per game.

Once we move away from equal playing time which is only during the play offs at this level, players who don’t get to play a lot of minutes in the games are still required to be at every practice and are expected to give their best effort at the practices. This is a challenging part of basketball. 

The attitude and effort given by that “bench player” in practice will significantly impact the team’s success.  Further, the attitude and effort will significantly impact the “bench player’s” potential to do well when she gets an opportunity in the game. If the child has the “disease of me," that makes her bench time even harder.

My challenge is to foster an enjoyment in the team’s success, a desire to help each other and to teach each player to “stay ready” to play in the game by working hard in practice. If I can meet my goal that experience of unselfishness and consistent effort will positively impacted the rest of each child's life.

Unfortunately, I have seen the opposite happen when “bench players” lose their drive to practice with passion. When their opportunity does come in the game, they perform poorly. Staying focused and passionate on the bench during games is important and must be taught.

This is one of main reasons Tayja spends so much time on the bench. The other reason I believe in equal playing time and small teams is that inexperienced players do not improve without "meaningful" game time minutes. Summer league games are meaningless. Travel season games are meaningless. I am looking 5, 6 years out.

My travel team would not have lost a game last season if I played to win instead of playing to develop every player on the team. Every practice was 90 percent skills and drills, 5 percent motion offense and 5 percent defense. Everyone got better and played about 20 minutes per game during the regular season since I only 8 players.

Winning is nice. Winning all the time will not teach long term life lessons that Tayja needs. She did learn with my travel team that SHE alone can not cause her team to win. Teaching loyalty and team work is more important to me than is winning. Developing basketball players is more important to me than winning.

I am looking long term. I am building a team to last and to be prepared for the national high school AAU circuit. This group of girls will be amazing in three years. This is why I am looking at more than how skilled a child is when I consider her for the program. I am looking closely at the parents.

A teams’ success depends on every parent, player and coach. Every member of the program needs each other. My ultimate goal in establishing team chemistry and solidarity is that all players will take great pride in their roles. Solidarity is a direct result of honesty and trust forming between the players, parents  and coaches. Solidarity allows players, parents and coaches to look past their own interests to what is best for the team while I develop their child.

Ideally I would like to have TWO teams in the system which is built around 5th grade Tayja. Those teams will play this summer, during the fall travel season and during the occasional tournaments the reason of the year.

The teams will practice together and split for playing time. Every year's summer teams will be created mostly from players from Ashland, Dover, Framingham and Sherborn. 

This summer we will play in the Zero Gravity MetroWest summer league, bring in a national shooting coach, play in the Bay State Games and enter every interested player a 3 on 3 tournament.
If I have 12 players ready,  we will play do AAU tournaments in the fall this year and in the spring and summer next year.

We will sometimes play games other times of the year. There will be clinics, scrimmages, and opportunities to get better year round. I will need coaches and parents who share my values and vision to do so.

Robin Sallie
July 2, 2013