The Jr. High girls started up yesterday. The first practice went better than I expected. So far they seem to talk less than the boys and are a bit more engaged in what we are doing. It looks like I have right around 20 girls total, 8ish 7th graders and 12 or so 8th graders. The numbers are a little high for the 8th grade, but that’s fine at this point. I think this is the age where girls either start showing a high aptitude for the sport or they begin to drop off a bit. I have no basis for that statement other than my own observations. At this time of year basketball and hockey battle for players. This age is when they really have to make the decision about which sport they are going to commit to since the seasons overlap. They could potentially do some of both, but they would end up missing practices and games in each. I don’t think that’s very fair to their teammates in either sport.
Yesterday I was the only coach there. I was told before season there would be another one with me (a young woman), then was told she might have some family issues that would take her out of the area for the season. Yesterday it was confirmed that she will not be able to coach. I spoke with the AD and he has someone on standby. After it was confirmed the first girl won’t be coaching he’s going to talk to the second person. It’s a lady around my age I would guess. I haven’t met her or really know much of anything about her. That’s the way I came into the system last year though too, the coach I was going to be working with didn’t really know anything about me. I think things will work out well…the only concern I have is that she might not want to condition the girls as much as I do. Hopefully we find common ground on that. Everything else I would expect will work out fine, and it’s pure speculation on the conditioning comment, we might be fine there as well. Maybe she’ll want them better conditioned than I do…who knows.
I like to go into practice with a road map of drills and running I want them to do. I don’t stick to it completely rigidly, but it gives me something to reference if we begin to get off track. I think it’s especially important in the first few practices for things to flow from one drill to another without a bunch of “ahh…um….what should we do now…um…”. Once I have several years under my belt I assume I’ll be able to roll without a cheat sheet, but for now I don’t see anything wrong with it at all. I don’t break it down by times, but I do have it broke out into segments. Basically it’s the stuff I want them to do before they get a shot of water. I try to keep these segments focused on specific skill areas, defense for one segment, ball handling, shooting…etc. Not that it has to be done this way…but I think it might help their mind set as they get back in to the game. If I can keep them focused on defensive footwork for 20min, then shift to shooting form for 20…so on it should give me a little more targeted practicing. Looking at the calendar we only have 10 practices before our first game…so I’ll need any focus tricks I can find.
The overall skill levels of the players is a little better than I had hoped for at the start of the season. We have some that excel and some that are a little behind, but overall they have a collectively higher level of skill than I expected. I’ve no idea what the other teams look like though. I’ve seen a few of the 7th grade teams last year (in 6th grade) but that doesn’t really help much…lots of things can change. It’s hard to “guess” at what you should be focusing on from week to week when you only have your players to compare to. I might think they are doing really well then in a game come to find out we are way behind. Not that I could push them harder in specific areas, I push as hard as I can in all areas, but I -feel- like maybe I could have worked something a little harder. With the boys I found out I should have worked in a couple of offensive sets towards the end…so I’ll try to get the girls going on an offense here the first part of next week. I’m going to spend this week entirely on conditioning (unless of course the other coach they bring in has different ideas).
The girls worked pretty hard yesterday…or at least they think they did. I brought them together at the end and told them that was a light conditioning practice since it was the first one…the next couple will get harder. I told them to believe that they will adjust to the physical work, it will get easier and translate into fun on the court against other teams.
We’ll see how it goes…day 1, in the books.