A long break, life happens

Its been a while since I last blogged. My intention is to blog about 1 time per week, but as well all have experienced, life happens. Between out of town tournaments, in town games, practices, school functions, and just everything else that goes into life, this blog took a back seat. But that time off allowed me to reflect even more on the things that I find important to communicated regarding coaching, developing athletes, or being and athlete/parent in the current high pressure world of youth sports. I’d like to spend just a little time today outlining something that I find to be very important as a coach, evaluating players during tryouts or even during the season.

We all are aware of evaluating skills and physical abilities of players to perform in the sport. I won’t spend too much time on this aspect of evaluation as it is well documented and something nearly every coach at any level pays attention too. One aspect of physical or skill evaluation, that I would like to touch upon, is the ability and willingness to not only compare the athlete to the prototypical norms, but to also see the unique athletic qualities they may possess. For example, on a basketball team, a coach may desire a post player who is tall and stout, someone who can be strong and be a presence in the low post on the court. During tryouts or any evaluation period the post players in the program should be considered with how they fit this mold. But a coach needs to be flexible with their ideals. They shouldn’t discount a post player who is smaller but with exceptional footwork. Or a tall leaner post player who may not be able to push people around as desired but can win in the post with length and movement. Often times players are evaluated and placed on teams based solely on an idealized version of what that player should be physically, and sometimes players are overlooked and disregarded. Be willing to look at what it takes to “win” at the position in your sport and learn the multiple paths to get there. Find players that can “win” in their execution is a far better way to build a team then just narrowly focusing on players that can win in a certain ideal way. This will also allow you to build diversity on your team in terms of the skill set you put on the playing field or court. You won’t always be able to find outliers, but you should always be willing to look for them and use them when they come around. Remain diverse in your thinking, don’t pigeonhole yourself into winning in one way.

In addition to evaluating a player’s physical attributes and their physical execution of the skills required to play their sport/position, coaches should learn to develop a method for evaluating the players potential and maybe even more importantly their ability to reach that potential.

When putting a team together, you aren’t necessarily building a team to win in the immediate aftermath of the tryouts. You are trying to build a team that will peak in performance as the player’s year, and career moves forward. Understanding the potential, or ceiling of a player becomes critical in making decision with regard to team building and team placement. Not only will understanding the true ceiling of a players ability allow you to construct a team that will advance as the year passes on, but it will allow you to better place players and aid them in their own development and often in their own joy in the sport. A player who evaluated just below another player in physical attributes/execution in the moment but displays a trait(s) that will allow them to achieve a higher level of success in the future is already ahead, they just haven’t gotten there yet. Placing this type of player on a lower team or cutting them from the team altogether could hinder their growth and development. You want a team that gets better as the season progresses, not a team that simply better than the alternative on day 1. This is an important aspect of my culture of coaching. The ability to not just assemble a quality team, but the ability to build a program that develops players, allows teams to get stronger as the season progresses, and ultimate builds teams/players that achieve excellence.

The key to making these decisions is to understand when a player is likely to achieve their full potential. A player with a high ceiling isn’t very helpful if they have virtually no chance of reaching that ceiling. And this is the third and final characteristic of players that need to be evaluated: their ability to reach their full potential. This is where the majority of your evaluation work will be put into. Understanding the players mentality, and work ethic. What is their mental make up? How do they handle success and failure? Players in your program for a number of years will be much easier to evaluate in this regard than someone new to the team/club. But you need to watch for signs and tells during the tryout process for indicators of what makes this player tick. You don’t need to be detailed in this evaluation in terms of specifics. Most players will fall into the category of “fine”. What you are looking for are players who are exceptional in their mentality and their approach, these players need to be “starred”. And you need to look for players who are lacking, they should be red flagged. Build your own mental characteristic chart, and be on the look out for players who have or lack a number of the qualities you are looking for. It will be critical to know when players are even or close to the same skill and one is a red flag and the other is a star player. These are the decision that make the difference in building a team for long term success and building a team that can win. The difference in a team that can win a championship, and a team that can win games.

There is a lot to unpack with these thoughts and ideas I have written about. And as I continue to add to the blog, I will expand on many of them. Again, the ultimate goal is to layout a foundation or blueprint for building a team with a strong culture and what that culture actually looks like. From tryouts, to player development, to coaching, to education of the parents and athletes. It is all part of building something that last over time and part of installing high quality traits in your athletes, no matter the level of success they have in the sport.