Hello again everyone – I want wish you all luck this weekend and I also want to share another good, quick read (see link below). While I do not agree with everything in the article (for example, I do give a lot of instruction during a game, but mostly to kids without the ball), this article is really quite good:

My favorite parts:

As a ref, you get a close-up view of how the confidence drains from the kids who get screamed at after a mistake. You see their confused looks after receiving incomprehensible instructions from several adults at once.

And:
“Pass it, pass it” is another popular scream at the younger ages, when we’re constantly hoping that in this country we develop better dribblers. In fact, it’s crucial that we encourage individual skills and creativity at the youngest ages. Imagine if you were given a team of 14-year-olds and half were excellent dribblers but needed to learn when to pass and the other half couldn’t dribble. It’d be much easier to encourage the dribblers to pass at the right time than to teach ball control skills to the group who spent their formative years without dribbling.
Thanks everyone,
Michael Hagerty, Sr.
Middle School Teacher
High School & Youth Coach
M.S.Ed. & NSCAA National Diploma
Posted in Coaching