u/symbionica

Hey everyone! Please don't let the title mislead, I'm open to advice from anyone. But I myself am a female coach with a girls team, and I'm not sure that the problem I'm going to present is prevalent on a boys team? You'll have to let me know.

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The issue I had last season is a single player with a lot of drama surrounding her. And a parent who immediately felt comfortable over-stepping me. I'm a volunteer coach at a junior high, but I'm not a teacher. I'm 35 and this was my first year coaching. Normally I'm a very confident, sometimes bossy, and definitely sassy person. I don't usually let people push me around. Right away in the season the parent was signing (like sign language) at their kid from the bench (she's not hearing impaired in any way) and also yelling at her if she wasn't paying attention to them. I'm sure I don't need to explain how this presents a problem for me as well as the team and the kid herself. Okay so next this parent will also "shoot around" with OUR practice balls before games until I tell him to get off the court. I want to tell him to stop trying to communicate with her during games, let her focus. But I don't think that would go over well. In fact I think the setting of any boundaries with him will be....unpleasant. i can do it but I also hate the thought of it going sideways at the school.

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And then there's the drama part. She herself is at the center of a bunch of rumors about other girls on the team. At first I didn't see her as a bully, but now I'm wondering if that wasn't always the case? So the question is, if she tries out next year, do I take her back to the team? I don't like a bully, but I also see where she's getting it all from. As well, we had so few girls trying out for the basketball team (we had 24 total and took everyone for 2 teams) that i dont want to diacourage anyone. The teachers working with me on this were absolute pros and I admire them, but I wonder if there's not something more I should do (especially regarding the parent) that would make it easier for them to get to the bottom of the bullying issue next time. I just hate to not take a girl on a sports team if she's genuinely interested, even if she is a little more difficult to manage. Help!

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TLDR: do you take back a player if they are a bully, when you know their parent is the problem? And is there a safe and respectable way to set boundaries with said parent? Or another way to deal with it?

Haven't seen a news report on it yet, just wondering if it's legit?

as a continuation of the post from yesterday about high IQ, I wanted to open a discussion with yall coaches about teaching players how to up their basketball (and sports) IQ. After browsing the comments on that post, it seems like most people would agree that a high sports IQ means setting up plays offensively and reading plays defensively. Example: a defender sees an offensive player make a ghost cut, they intervene with help defense and intercept the pass, then throw it down the court to another high IQ teammate who saw the interception and is already running to the opponent's basket for a quick layup - i think we would agree that this is a simple, high IQ play. In fact, i'd consider any interception a high IQ moment. I think teaching players to recognize those moments as scoring opportunites comes down to three key things:

1. repitition: if the skills they need to execute plays are muscle memory, i.e. they're fluent in basketball, more of their focus will be on setting up plays so they can USE those skills. this is even supported by neuroscience: when physical skills become muscle memory, youre using a different part of your brain to execute those now basic movements (like walking, you don't have to think about it when you do it because you built that muscle memory years ago), which frees up the part of the brain needed for learning. So drill those skills!
2. condition: simulate a game environment as much as possible so your players are used to engaging that muscle memory in a high-energy, high-pressure environment. this again goes back to learning and the brain: when you're drilling your team, you're conditioning them to react automatically to certain things (example, dropping into triple-threat when recieving a pass). And this is different from the usual conditioning we do (cardio or strength), this is behavioural conditioning - meaning it's happening in the brain. this is the one i find most challenging to do, but i do have a few suggestions - I coach youth girls, so we'll scrimmage with the boys team (everyone gets really nervous, blood pressure goes up, stakes go up lol). next year I'm going to open my practices for viewing as well (my players get distracted during home games pretty easily so I want to have their friends there so I can teach them how to ignore them/desensitize them to the excitement of their friends seeing them play).
3. competition: we run a mini-game in games to help our girls focus on their newer skills. the skills we're looking for are each assigned a value, usually between 1 and 3, where the skill I really want to see on the court has the highest value (I always pick three skills to work on). we track scores for the individual players and the winner of the mini-game is our game MVP. On a brain level, this creates a series of smaller goals to focus on, rather than the big ticket of just scoring. Now the players are engaging that focus/learning region of the brain the entire time they play, and this in turn is intitiating activity in the muscle-memory regions. What you're ultimately doing is bridging those two areas with stronger connections (like physically, with neurons and neurochemicals). That PHYSICAL BRIDGE between the muscle memory region and the learning region in the brain is what you want to strengthen to increase basketball IQ. For me and my players, that means running a mini game.

Obviously some players will naturally be better than others, but I do believe that it's possible to teach and train the brain as much as the rest of the body to achieve that high basketball IQ.

SO all that being said, what do yall think about improving your players' sports IQ? how do you do it?