đ¤ Thought Starter
âšď¸ââď¸ Fenerbahçe Passing Drill
đ Coaching Competence Tiers
đ° Washington Officials Test Body Cams
đź The Playlist: Tezeta (Nostalgia)
ATTN Coaches: I will be speaking at the 2024 Fourth District Magic Valley Electric 45th Coaches Clinic this Friday & Saturday in Jackpot, Nevada. Topics include: Coaching a Conceptual Offense, Program Building: What Iâve Learned Podcasting, and CLA in Practice. If you are in the area, I encourage you to come say hi.
đ¤ Thought Starter
You canât just say âI have a system, it works.â You can have the best system in the world, but if you canât relate to players it wonât matter. If a guy throws 100 mph with no command, does he need velocity training?
- Anonymous MLB executive, The Massive Change Sweeping Through MLB Training from The Athletic
âšď¸ââď¸ Fenerbahçe Passing Drill
I discovered this passing drill from a CoachingU+ clinic by Florida Atlantic assistant coach Kyle Church. FAU includes a version of the drill in most of their practices and I can see why.
We introduced Fenerbahçe Passing with about a month left in the season. It didnât take long before we saw it paying off in games.
Simple version is drive on the closeout with help stopping the drive leading to the to pass opposite the drive. Great way to develop footwork and passing in repetition without repetition scenario. We typically do it for 2 minutes unless we extend it when see an area that we need to work on.
Church points out in the clinic that you can adapt this to fit a lot of different situations. After introducing, we noticed that the help person wasnât doing a good enough job. We told the driver to âpunish the helpâ by scoring. The help person started doing a lot better job taking away the basket.
In the video, you will see a situation where the closeout defender sticks with the driver, almost forcing a double team. I have this in my notes to include in the future. In this situation, you might allow one of the offensive players opposite the ball to make a basket cut when the drive is doubled.
Lots of teaching opportunities out of this practice scenario.
đ Coaching Competence Tiers
âOur main goal is to make conductors who donât have to be able to do everything, but should be aware of everything.
I saw a Twitter thread a couple of weeks ago featuring takeaways from the book âMensch: Beyond the Conesâ by Jonathan Harding. The book is a deep-dive into German footballâs development system for players and coaches. I picked up the book on Kindle and have enjoyed and appreciate the content as a coach.
The title of the bookâs second chapter is Kompetenz (Competence) and it looks at how Germany trains its top-tier coaches through an intensive academy. Several takeaways, but I was interested in how the coaches at the academy go through competence development in eight areas. Here are the competencies. (The questions after each competency are my own.)
Subject Competence: How well do you know the game?
Imparting Competence: Can you share that knowledge?
Speaking Competence: How is your speaking ability when talking to individuals? Groups
Social Competence: Whatâs your understanding of things like empathy, character, authority?
Leadership Competence: Do you understand what good leaders do?
Media Competence: How do you deal with the press? Other types of media?
âIâ Competence: Who are you as a coach? A person outside of coaching?
Network Competence: Who do you know that you can reach out to?
I appreciate the breakdown. It shows how much goes into the job of coaching â even at the high school level these are relevant. It provides a framework for people interested in coaching and evaluative tool for those who are already coaching.
Funny enough, I found similar framework from Cody Royle, who âcoachesâ head coaches for a living and wrote the books Second Set of Eyes, The Tough Stuff, and Where Others Wonât. Hereâs a partial screenshot of Royleâs post from X about his 4 âcraftâ areas coaches should master.
QUESTION: If you were to create a competency framework for basketball coaches, what would it include?
đ° Washington Officials Test Body Cams
I read a story from The Spokesman-Review last week about a pilot program in the state of Washington that has some high school officials wearing body cameras. Hereâs how it works âŚ
Washington officials are instructed to activate the camera in three types of situations: an unsporting technical, any action that could threaten the officialâs safety, or discriminatory or harassing behavior by anyone in the gym, Stordahl said.
The camera includes a monitor that shows what itâs recording. The system does not record the whole game but records the 30 seconds prior to being activated.
Sad that it is coming to this. Even more sad is the stats identified in the story of what officials have to deal with. Itâs no wonder that official shortages are sweeping the country.
At least where Iâm from, officials are often driving 50 to 100 miles a night to give teens an opportunity to play a game. That they give their time where they could be doing other things is something I try to remember when Iâm working with them during games. (I still get after them from time to time.)
This season, we had a parent volunteer to provide snacks and drinks (the non- alcoholic kind) for the officials. They appreciated it.
Before games, I make it a point to tell the crew each game that I really appreciate that they are officiating. I also had our districtâs head of officials to forward an email where I thanked them for preparing us to win a state title. After all, they did a lot to teach our girls the rules of the game.
đź The Playlist: Tezeta (Nostalgia)
Iâve been aware of this song for some time, but Iâve been listening to it a lot since watching the show Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Tezeta (Nostalgia) appears in the new Amazon show from Donald Glover. (My wife and I really enjoyed the show.)
A Wikipedia search identifies Tezeta âas a music genre in Ethiopia and Eritrea in ballad form.â I also learned that the band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have a song called Tezeta that I will need to listen to when I have a chance.