Being a basketball coach can be challenging. Knowing an individual player’s strengths and weaknesses, experience level, work ethic, parental backing, adherence to team chemistry, and ability to adapt to my personal coaching philosophy are all thrown into the basketball blender. What comes out can be a great recipe for dessert or disaster. It all comes down to the ingredients.
When you are coaching your daughter’s elementary team, and it is the first year for the program, most of the above can be tossed directly into the disposal because those are the wrong ingredients. What I found to be the number one ingredient for a team comprised of fifth and sixth grade girls? Patience. My patience, that is.
As in, “That’s okay, Monica (not her real name). You double dribbled.” Again. Monica looked at me and noticed that I was smiling and clapping, giving her encouragement.
During the first practice with the girls’ elementary team, I noticed a few things.
The bad news? We couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn with our lay-ups.
The good news? We sure could rebound.
The bad news? We had a tendency to dribble quite a few Wilsons off our feet to the other end of the court.
The good news? Due to our dribbling prowess, we were going to be the best-conditioned team in the state.
Before long, practices gave way to the beginning of our schedule. Everyone on the team was excited, especially the coach—most definitely the coach.
I’m not exactly sure what the final scores were on those games that year. I just loved the fact that my players had progressed, double dribbling wasn’t as popular, we actually hit a few shots, and no one had quit.
Most of our opponents were close to our skill set and slowly progressed throughout the season. We were scrappy. Our motto was, “We’re short, but we’re slow.”
There was a team from the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area that we played against a couple of times that first season. Those games of hoops resembled a volleyball match. The Grand Rapids Grizzlies were tall. A few were greater in height than my six feet. We were not. Any missed shot of ours was snagged by urchins with hands bigger than mine, passed via the outlet, and tossed into the bucket. Any missed shot of theirs was tapped back and forth to each other until it dropped through the net. We affectionately called them “The Tree People.”
But the game that still sticks in my craw these many years later is the game where our team defense was near perfect. It was flawless, in fact. It was our inconsistent offense that cost us the game.
We were playing a road game against a team called Butternut. Adding to the disappointment of this game was the fact that Butternut’s gym was an hour and a half drive from our house.
The game could’ve gone either way. Each team seemed tight at the beginning on offense, but lock down on the defensive end, even for two elementary teams.
At the half, both teams were deadlocked. I encouraged my players to keep shooting since I figured that their shots would soon turn into buckets.
The great stat from this game was that we had never rebounded so well in a contest before!
At the end of regulation, the score was knotted. I told Butternut’s coach that the first team to score in overtime was going to win because both teams were playing great defense. She agreed.
The ref tossed the ball. We lost the tap. The extra period was officially underway.
To this day, so many years later, I still am amazed at how a junk shot from the free throw line could go in, but it did. It was the luckiest shot in all of my years in basketball that I have ever witnessed.
The player was passed the ball in the lane with her back to the basket; she fumbled it and then dribbled off her shoe, picked it back up, and performed a three-quarter turn. She stopped with her torso facing the crowd and launched a missile that had rarely been practiced since James Naismith came up with this idea of basketball.
The ball reached warp factor five as it slammed into the backboard, hit the back of the rim, popped straight up into the air, and then descended through the net like a two hundred pound feather. I glanced over at the opposing coach who was grinning from ear to ear. I had been correct in my assumption. Her team now owned a commanding lead and I immediately called timeout.
“Girls, hey girls, its okay. All we have to do in the next minute and a half is hit just one bucket. You can do that.”
Our offense was stuck, and I secretly hoped my inspirational words would help them.
Realizing they may not, I added one more parting word of encouragement. “Whoever has the ball has the green light to shoot. Everyone else goes for the rebound.”
My young buckateers took my advice and chucked more bricks (yes, more rebounds) in a span of ninety seconds than one could believe humanly possible.
Alas, a win was not to be. As the time ran out, the girls from the CCHA Patriots put up a valiant effort in an overtime loss to Butternut.
Final Score in O.T.
Butternut 8
CCHA Patriots 6
Told you we played great defense.
