The preparation for the basketball competition is the aspect that holds the most importance in performance and development teams, aiming to achieve results that will be evaluated by a technical staff. Even with good competition preparation, setbacks can occur that affect the results, and this is where the daily challenge for all team members lies, to adapt and overcome any situation.
The competition as a tool for the holistic growth of the youth player:
The competition must go hand in hand with the player's training from the beginning, for the following reasons:
- Most children need to compete by nature.
- They must experience both victory and defeat, and channel them correctly afterward.
- Children's idols are those who perform impressive technical actions and win important competitions.
- For the emotionality, the challenge, learning, tolerance to frustration, consequences of each action, respect for the opponent, respect for the environment, and respect for basketball.
DETECTION METHOD AND CONSTRUCTION
- Detection of competitive strengths and weaknesses in a team.
How can we detect the competitive strengths and weaknesses of a team?
- Have clear objectives to be solidified once the season is over.
- Talk to past coaches about individual and collective competitive aspects.
- Create and review videos individually and collectively.
- Individual and collective talks.
- Competition methodology
How can we promote the individual and collective abilities that arise in basketball competition?
- Use of small-sided games in training tasks.
- Quarterly scoring system.
- Give value to technical-tactical objectives in relation to the clarity of the goals mentioned earlier.
- Differentiate between a miss and a mistake. Make this clear from the start.
- Educate on competitive habits and demand them appropriately later on.
- Use of video. Show clips of difficult moments in competition to raise awareness and acknowledge their existence. Accept that tough moments will come, though we don’t know when.
- Create individual and team routines to overcome tough moments during games.
- In development and performance categories, internalize a solid offensive or defensive system and use it as a boost.
- Building partnerships within the team
Partnerships within a team are the relational connections established between team members that support both individual and collective development, based on trust, leveraging strengths, and patience towards both personal and others' weaknesses.
Building partnerships in youth teams is often challenging, as the level of basketball experience is lower and players are in the process of discovering their technical and tactical skills. As a result, they may unconsciously forget the importance of supporting their teammates on the court.
At the development and competitive stages, the level of experience is generally higher, making the context more favorable for the creation and reinforcement of partnerships. Below, I suggest some guidelines that can help build and strengthen partnerships within a team.
- Encourage players to interact before and after training.
- Carry out group therapy sessions aimed at identifying the strengths and areas for improvement of all members.
- Allow players to talk to each other during low-intensity drills.
- Promote defensive communication by creating a vocabulary players can relate to, and that helps them connect words with their own movements and those of their teammates.
- Use unopposed communication drills based on our style of play.
- Explore systems or game concepts together, and then implement the ones that best fit the players.
In our sports program, we will use competition as a tool to reinforce the technical-tactical concepts we work on daily.
Jordi Izquierdo (@coachJ04DI)
ITW Sport Sports Program
