How to Prepare the Freshmen Basketball Player for High School

Coaching in a small town for the past several years I have had to find ways to get the most out of our young freshmen players. Many times over the past few seasons our program has been forced to dress and play one or two freshmen each year. Obviously every once in awhile a freshmen comes into the high school program with excellent talent and is ready to go. However most freshmen, who may have been great junior high players, have a little trouble adjusting to the speed of the high school varsity game.

Every year my coaching staff starts early in the season helping those young junior high players make the transition. Every week a member of the high school coaching staff visits the junior high practice. We make a point to talk with as many of the players as possible and help out in drills when time allows. Our varsity team along with the coaches also tries to attend as many of the junior high games as possible. We all arrive together in our traveling gear, sit together and congratulate the young players, win or lose after the game. We have found that this little act also has been a big help with public relations.

Before our high school games start we will send a couple of players down to the junior high team with game schedules and passes. We encourage the players to attend our games and bring their families. Two or three times each season we will have the junior high coach bring his players to one of our practices. We have found that this helps the players see the difference in speed and hopefully how drills and plays should be ran.

When the season comes to an end we always invite the junior high players to attend our awards banquet. We do our best to make a big deal and honor our high school players and especially our graduating seniors. Before the night is over we introduce the middle school team and give each player one of our high school teams' high-light tapes. After a night of food, slide shows and entertainment it is our hope that next years incoming freshmen are excited about getting their chance to shine.

During the awards banquet we also hand out summer game and workout schedules. We follow this up a few weeks later by visiting next year's freshmen at school. The coaches normally meet with the players during lunch and we found that it never hurts to bring four or five large pizzas. We again bring summer schedules and talk with the players about taking the first step into high school basketball.

Summer league is where the real work begins. The first practice of the summer we pair incoming freshmen up with a returning junior or senior. The first couple of nights we do several two man drills. We have found that this not only helps the freshmen but gives the older players a little ownership in the program. Once summer games start we work extremely hard to get those young players as much time on the court as possible. As the summer rolls on the level of competition we face will get stronger. It is our hope that our last five to ten games will be played against varsity caliber teams that we will face the following season.

When school starts the next year we send out welcome letters to every freshmen boy in the high school. We first welcome them to high school and then we encourage them to try-out for the basketball team. The coaching staff will make a point to be in or around the gym one or two nights after school the first few weeks of school. This allows players to talk with us and get familiar with the program. As soon as we are allowed to start individual workouts we encourage the young players to participate. In our state we can only work with two players in a twenty four hour period. We do our best to schedule a younger player to work out with an older player as much as possible.

When the season starts it is our hope that we have done everything possible to get those freshmen ready. Of course not every player will take advantage of the opportunities we have presented to them, but the ones who do have shown quick transition time. What we do may be called recruiting. We look at it as a method of building our program in a small community. If we don't make these efforts the wrestling program will. In years past we have lost several great players to wrestling. I have all the respect in the world for our wrestling team and their coaches. However, I will not lose any more players to them.