How to fix these issues teaching plays?
So last year was my first year as a high school boys coach. I prefer to run a motion and reads-based offense the majority of the time (teaching players to play vs teaching plays) but I want to mix in set plays here and there. I have some pretty good sets, but I had two big issues with it last year:
Guys would get too robotic. No matter how many times I always told them they could “break” the play if they saw an open lane, open man, etc, they wanted to do exactly what they were supposed to do and wouldn’t look for anything else even if the defense took that option away. How can I make them less robotic? Or is this just something experience/reps will solve?
Guys would get confused, even if I had them running in multiple spots in practice, they’d get out in a game and mix things up. It was really hard for them to remember the sets especially if they had to know more than 1 spot. I’ve seen a coach who tells kids what position they’re going to play as they check in (1-5). So with that I’d be teaching sets by assigning each spot a number. Do any of yall do that? Or do you have a better system that will help kids remember this stuff?
Thx for the help. Happy 4th.