Put the Youth Back into the Youth Basketball System
By Brian McCormick
Co-Founder and Performance Director, Trainforhoops.com
How does one implement a philosophical change? How can a single coach change the system? What incremental changes can a coach make at his level? How can a coach move the nation’s basketball development system one step closer to a better model, as opposed to the current, disjointed system?
“Trust yourself and speak out what you believe. If what you believe is different, dare to be different. Dare to be in a hurry to change things for the better.” –Geoffrey Ballard, founder of Ballard Fuel Systems and co-inventor of fuel cells for powering buses and automobiles
Three approaches to change the system on a grassroots level are to: (1) Educate parents; (2) Create more training-oriented club programs; and (3) Adopt a learning-oriented approach to youth leagues.
Educate parents
Educated parents make better consumers. Parents who understand the positives and negatives of different approaches to youth sports will make more informed decisions. With greater knowledge and awareness, parents will seek programs with a long term, learning-oriented philosophy, not necessarily the programs with the best chance to go to AAU Nationals or the programs which play the most games. When parents change their spending habits, the market will reflect the changes and businessmen will create programs to meet parent demands. As these programs grow in influence, there will be, as Malcolm Gladwell calls it, a “tipping point,” and long term, learning-oriented development programs will replace the current AAU system as the prominent form of youth basketball programs.
Create training-oriented programs
For parents to make these choices, these programs must exist. I know parents who search for these programs, but simply cannot find them. They exist in a basketball purgatory, unsure whether to join the AAU mix or wait until their son is old enough to play school basketball.
Coaches, leagues and businessmen must develop training-oriented programs as an alternative to the competition-based teams. Consumers will not change all at once, but for change to occur, some coaches and leagues must lead. Some training-oriented organizations exist: the Suwanee Sports Academy in Suwanee, GA replaced its competition-based business model with a new training-based model called the On-Court program; the Los Angeles Rockfish program competes in spring and summer AAU events, but is best known for its workouts. On SoCalHoops.com, an internet message board, a father posted this about the LA Rockfish program in the summer of 2006:
The only way a team of freshmen is going to win is to have them play in their age group. As a parent whose son is now in college I can tell you that is NOT the way to go. My son wasn't going to be a pro, but he would have been a much better player if we had stayed with Rockfish, a program that stresses personal development. Unfortunately, I valued winning meaningless games over my own kid's development. The things he is being taught to do in college are the same things that [Dave] Benezra was trying to get him to do, ahead of time, so he would be prepared as a college freshman and could move on to still other more advanced skills. Those trophies? Oh, they still look good, although they are gathering dust in the garage. And those wins? Seems like nobody really remembers them. Point is your kid is an individual trying to get better in a team game. Rockfish can do that. We only sampled 3 programs personally, so, I'm not sure about everybody else, but I didn't get the impression that's what counts from watching other all star teams.
AAU programs have the structure to implement a philosophical change because they offer teams over a period of years, rather than for a season at a time: players join as youth players (u-10 or u-11) and move up each year, playing with the same program around their school schedule. Some players join a program at eight or nine-years-old and stay through college. The question is philosophy: does the program emphasize winning every year? Or, is there a gradual skill progression and cooperation between coaches to ensure player development over a period of years?
Programs who use this structure and adopt a training-orientation lead the change. Every team and program wants to win; however, the training emphasis and overall club philosophy differs. Competition-based programs play in weekly tournaments, sacrifice practice time to play more games and use practices to prepare for games. Training-oriented programs use practice time to develop players’ skills and play in fewer games to maximize the training time.
Making the change at the school level is more challenging. Often, the varsity coach does not control the junior varsity, freshmen or middle school coaches. Without enough control to create a program-wide philosophy of long term development, change is more difficult. When the feeder programs cooperate with the high school varsity coach, the school system has the structure for long term development.
Adopt learning-oriented league-wide philosophies
Leagues offer an easy way to educate parents and train coaches to adopt a learning-oriented approach. A long term approach within the league makes sense financially because it offers an alternative to the rush to the competitive-based teams and motivates consumers to stay through the gradual development process. Today, leagues highlight their competitiveness to match the consumer’s desire. However, rather than being a less talented version of competitive basketball, what if leagues changed philosophy and extolled the virtues of recreational and developmental basketball? Rather than being a small fish in a big pond, be the big fish in a small pond.
Recreational basketball and developmental basketball are important stages in the talent development process and parents ignore these phases to their child’s detriment. Rather than competing with the market, create a new market. Through re-defining their purpose, these leagues may lose the parents who want to win (like the parent who lamented leaving the LA Rockfish program), but retain other players for a longer period of time as they move through the development process from recreational basketball to developmental leagues.
If players sign-up individually and are placed on a team with a league coach, paid or volunteer, the league can create a coaching education program to shape the coaches’ values. This curriculum should educate the coach on the difference between a learning orientation and an outcome orientation and the difference between a LTAD approach and a Peak by Friday approach.
These three approaches use the current basketball infrastructure to create a more long term, learning-oriented approach to basketball development. If more leagues and coaches educate parents on the benefits of a child-centered, learning-oriented approach, the market will move toward training-oriented programs and the major sponsors which power the youth basketball system will follow the grassroots’ dollars. Individuals can create change through their choices; however, coaches and leagues must develop alternatives so parents and players can speak with their dollars.
If you run an AAU program, a school-based feeder system or a league and would like to order copies of Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development in bulk, please email highfivehoopschool@yahoo.com. To sign-up for McCormick’s Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter, email hard2guardinc@yahoo.com with “Subscribe” in the subject.