By Shane Dreiling
One of the common questions our staff gets when we speak at
various coaching clinics throughout the country has to do with
communication. How do we get our
players to communicate with each other and with the coaches so well? As a staff, we pride ourselves on our
communication level with our players and enjoy seeing them learn how to do so
with one another.
How does this work?
For starters, we are constantly striving to learn new techniques from coaches
across the country. We want to know
what works for other programs and we try to take something from each coach and
apply it to our own situation.
Secondly, coaches who visit our practices and attend our notebook
lessons will tell you, WE PRACTICE IT!!!
Every day, we talk about communication.
I believe that a team cannot be successful on the court or off if they
simply don’t know how to communicate with those around them.
In our program, we have several key strategies we use to
help our team grow in our ability to communicate with each other.
- Team
Retreat – Every fall before our first game, the coaches host a team
retreat. This is a great time to
go over our rules and expectations.
It is important to get everyone on the same page and our team
retreat is the first step towards this process.
- Notebook
/ Handouts – Each of our players keeps a notebook during the course of the
season. Part of the notebook is
made up of the usual fare.
However, the value of the notebook is found in the handouts that
are given out during the course of the week. These handouts range from motivational stories and poems to
things that pertain only to our program.
An example of the latter is the handout we give our players on our
defensive anchors and our team terminology. Regardless the handout, our players know that we will
discuss the handout the next day in our pre-practice meeting. We find that it is not enough to just
pass along a good message found on a piece of paper. We follow up with conversation, which helps
improve our communication throughout the program but helps the coaching
staff relay to the players the values and principles we find are important
to our program.
- Show
& Tell – When the team first comes back after Christmas break, the
players and coaches hold a Show & Tell day after practice. Every member of the program brings
something from home that has meaning to him/her and each of us then
explains the importance of the item that we are showing. Why?
It helps us build communication but it also helps each of us to
learn a bit more about those we compete alongside.
- Thought
of the Day (TOD) – Before practice, I hang the practice schedule up on the
locker room door. At the top of
this schedule is our thought of the day.
This thought can come from coaches, leaders, and poets…anyone who
has a message that has value. Our
TOD rarely involves the sport of basketball, but the message is one that
is always applicable to our program and players in some way. Players are expected to have the TOD
memorized before practice so we can discuss it as we go through our
stretching exercises.
- Terminology
– One of our handouts is a listing of our terminology. Our players and coaches take pride in
our terminology. It is one of the
many things that make our program unique.
However, it also helps save time in practice and in games. For instance, a simple phrase like
“high on the hip” lets our players know where they need to be defensively
and where our help side needs to be without going into specific detail
time and time again. During games,
our players have started using our terminology in the game and on the
bench…all in an effort to remind each other what needs to be done for our
program to be successful.
These are some of the things that have allowed our program
to grow in the art of communication. As
stated earlier, our program takes a lot of pride in this area and it comes at a
price…. a lot of work and attention to detail.
I have found the results to be well worth that investment and I think
you will as well.
