Coach_B

To my knowledge, it hasn't been announced.

The current girls coach has coached 9 years. He has ended his career with a winning record. They've been to the region the past 3 years (i think 3, maybe 4) & went to the 2nd round of the region a couple times. The girls have competed in a tough district with Forrest putting out excellent teams year after year. Making the region the past three years, and the 2nd round a couple of years, is an accomplishment for the program. I would say that the program is in a better position than when the current coach started. These seniors have raised the bar and expectations for the program. In order to take the program to the next level, the next coach needs to get the players working more often & more efficiently when they come in the gym. Cardio conditioning needs to improve. The junior high girls coach & the elementary school girls coach both get their players into the gym often & use the time efficiently. Shooting needs to improve by taking game shots @ game speed, rather than no shots / game shots @ half speed. There needs to be a greater attention to detail. For example, I still recall in a previous year watching a practice where the girls were practicing extremely hard & learning how to get in front of the post on the top shoulder @ the foul line. They were working hard, but in general if an offensive post player has driven you to the foul line the defensive player needs to work from the low shoulder. This is let alone working on the exact footwork for getting in front of a player. I would not assume that two family members coach the same. The two family members in the school system are the junior high girls coach & elementary school boys coach. What parts of their coaching style are the same with the current coach?

Shawna, In defense of Keith, the original poster made it his business. It was a broad topic given to the Coach T community. He was nice enough to give us unbiased opinions from someone who has no ties on either side of the argument. Regardless of whether or not you think his information was wrong, Mr. Wooden opened the topic up to everyone on these boards. I was under the assumption that the OP was your husband, but that is just hearsay. It could be a 15 year old kid or an 80 year man for all I know. Either way you should probably figure out who it is & politely ask them not to post situations that closely resemble your daughter's. I would do that anyway if I didn't want people from around the state giving their opinions.

Summary: 1) The specifics about your daughter should not have been posted. It's the tone of your post that surprises me. 2) Personal attacks are not a valid argument. If what your saying is true it should be defendable without personal attacks. 3) Are these posts for you or your daughter? 4) I'm not against criticizing a coach including Coach Binkley. What's important though is the way in which it is done. 5) Teams need to focus on their team goal. Everything else is minor compared with reaching that goal. This problem arose when some specifics about the situation were posted. That should have never been posted in the first place. Most people would agree that its perfectly acceptable to give the facts & clear up any falsehoods from peoples posts about your daughter. Its the tone of your posts that make me think of someone that is a bit out of control. I guess we just disagree on how we would want to be defended by parents. I still wouldn't want a relative posting in your tone on a public forum that people across the state will see. Once again personal attacks are not valid to an argument. If an insane person and a medical doctor are arguing whether or not the doors in our school are maroon or green it matters nothing their occupations. The door is maroon regardless of whether they agree on it or not. It's easy to attack the person to discredit an argument, but then you're not attacking the argument itself. Maybe the Apostle Paul shouldn't have said anything about marriage. Maybe Condoleeza Rice shouldn't say anything to the parents that have lost soldiers in the war since she has never had children. I don't claim to know what it's like to be a parent whose daughter was attacked. At the same time are these posts for you or your daughter? In the past 2 & 1/2 years I have probably criticized Coach Binkley more about basketball than anyone in this county. If Mr. Howard & Mr. Bouldin could see me on a few of the weekends they would likely be jealous. It just appears that I am against criticizing him because 1) I normally don't criticize in front of a huge number of people. 2) I will say in front of a large group of people the many things I have seen Coach Binkley do great for the girls basketball program in VBC. 3) When I do criticize I try to stick to specifics. An example being for the first two years we disagreed on whether or not our man defense should take girls to the middle or to the sides. I showed him Summit & Auriemma teaching to take them to the sides. I talked with him about why I believed it was better in general & better for the talent we had on the floor. Sometimes those conversations were more civil & sometimes they were less civil on my part. That's one example among many. Either way though I tried to limit the number of people who were around because ultimately he is the coach & the girls need to buy in to what he says regardless if I disagree. Getting back to the original point topic I have no problem with her being benched for missing practice. If that's a position that a coach wants to take then that's fine with me. When I played basketball @ Sparta I knew the other teams offenses better than my own. If we played a team on Tuesday the non-starters had to know the team's offenses by @ least Monday's practice. That way in Monday's practice & Tuesday's walkthrough we could drill our 1st team over & over until they knew exactly what the other team was going to do. If you missed Monday's practice it was more than missing skill practice (shooting, rebounding, dribbling, etc). You missed knowing the opposing team's offense which means you would have to try to learn everything in Tuesday's walkthrough. There was a really good chance that the person who missed wasn't going to start although it wasn't a guarantee. Knowing me under the circumstances I probably would have started your daughter, but I have no problem with the coach not starting her. Ultimately it is a non issue & up to the coach. We had the goal to make the state. We backed our coach completely in any of those type of decisions. Starting, points, time played, everything was a backseat to making it to the state. This was followed by everyone on our team except for 1 person who eventually left for the better. If we won everyone had a good game. If we lost none of us had a good game with regard to individual accomplishments. My honest assessment of basketball in general in the county is that personal accomplishments have got to take a back seat to team goals. It pains me to hear after losses "so&so played good because he/she had 20 but the rest of the team didn't play well" or "the refs cost us the game." The group of kids that will have a common goal, stick together, not make excuses, & work to meet their goal will likely make the state.

To summarize since I write too much /dry.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=" 1) Arguments attacking the person are good for politics but invalid normally. 2) Your daughter is an excellent post player that will be vital to our teams success. 3) I bet you will find good coaches on both sides of the not starting argument. 4) At best this thread doesn't help your daughter or her team. At worst it hurts them. 5) Criticizing a coach is fine if done constructively. Forrest in the tourny we either play a higher pressure man where we cut the floor in half & then in a 4th & cut off the passing lanes, or we pack it in a two-three zone & hope they can't hit from outside. I don't believe coming out in our regular man is going to work against them since they will run their offense until we get out of position & they get a shot near the basket. We all have opinions. I don't think its wrong to give them as long as they are given constructively.

"Did something happen" is a really vague way to ask a question. What happened was we finally have two people that are willing to spend a large portion of their time volunteering to help our girl basketball players. Two people will always be superior to one person running a practice since you can break the team down into different groups & the players get more individual attention in their groups. This is regardless of whether they are male or female. Its an added bonus they are female. Some players respond good to everyone, some respond better to males, & some better to females. Its also nice to have two different personality types on the bench because once again players respond differently to different personalities. They are two more people there able and willing to reach the kids for the better. I know Coach Amy has spent countless hours working with the girls, preparing activities for the girls, and she has opened up her home to the girls numerous times. She has done this selflessly with little personal gain other than knowing she is making an impact on the lives of many of these girls. To imply that all of her hard work is somehow inferior to Coach Sullivan sitting on the bench with the girls shows a complete lack of knowledge in building a basketball team. Do you realize that when Coach Sullivan & Coach Binkley did that neither of them spent practice time with the others team? How does an hour sitting on the bench during a basketball game help more than spending every practice with the girls, numerous open gyms, and a large number of team activities? With regards to basketball she is the best thing that has happened for a number of those girls. Has she impacted them all in the same way? No, but who could do that? She does all of this as an assistant coach who is getting paid nothing. If she wasn't there this past Saturday the one high school girl that came to work on her shot would not have been there. & you want to complain about her? Really how dumb would you like to look in front of all these other people on the forums?

What your saying is correct. What is absent from your post is any reference to motivating these girls. I have been working with girl basketball players for 2 & 1/2 years now. I have seen girls work extremely hard for their team. But in general sometimes I feel like I'm rolling the dice when it comes to motivation. I have motivated more boys to work hard than girls & I haven't spent one tenth of the time thinking "how do I get these boys motivated." I have spent countless hours & nights not being able to sleep thinking up ways to get the girls @ the gym to practice their shooting. I can't speak for the rest of the coaching staff, but in that sense we have failed as coaches to motivate. Until the motivation issue is corrected all of what you've said above will not work even though its critical to win ball games. You can tell a player to do the correct thing, but in order to execute it in a game that player has to be motivated enough to sacrifice for her team more than the opposing teams players are willing to sacrifice for theirs. Simply put if Clarkrange spends more time shooting correctly & game speed than we do there is a good chance that even running the right defense they are going to rip it to shreds. Here are some ways I can think of to help alleviate some of the problems. #1 - The girls need to gain more for being on the basketball team. The first thing that needs to be bought are basketballs. There should be a basketball for each girl. At the moment this is not the case. Secondly where does the money go from these games? Why are the girls / boys either paying for their shoes (girls) or camp (boys)? Perhaps we are tight on money, but I see the gym packed at many home games. #2 - 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th grade teams along with JV teams. We have enough girls to field every single one of these teams with the possible exception of the 9th grade team. We might have enough there, but I was not at their tryouts so I can't speak for sure. I know there are easily enough girls wanting to play basketball to have a team at each grade level in middle school. I've offered to coach the teams, but its still not a reality. Playing time is a HUGE motivator. No wonder a lot of these girls don't show up to shoot when they have to sit the bench game after game. If a surrounding county's girls get to play 20 games a year @ each grade level they are 20 games ahead of many of our girls. This doesn't count the extra work they put in because they are motivated since they are getting to play. #3 - A practice gym. I know this one would be a large cost to the county but most school systems will have 3 gyms (elementary, middle, & high school). We have two. In middle school Sequatchie practices longer than us on many days simply because we are pushing to get two junior high practices in, followed by a high school practice, followed by another high school practice. Add to this the fact that junior high practices happen at the same time. I'm amazed at how well our middle schoolers learn in an hour of practice in a gym filled with 30+ girls / boys. That is a huge strain on a middle schoolers attention span. Furthermore one high school team is getting out later than they should because they are waiting on middle school practice. This cuts into their free time since after studying there is little time left in the day making them dislike basketball even further. Compare this to Sparta. We had one group practice from 130-330 & after that use the weight room for 30 minutes to an hour & a half. The other team would use the weight room from 130-330 & then practice from 330-530. By 530 each player had lifted weights @ least 30 minutes often an hour & practiced for 2 hours. Here we are asking the late practice kids to get out @ 730. The talent is there in Van Buren County. Since I can remember they have had remarkable talent in the county that should be able to get them to the state level year after year. But these things add up. The coaches need to motivate better. The players need to practice their shots / fundamentals more often & at game speed. The parents need to quit being so negative toward everyone. All of that is good. But the infrastructure of how we train basketball players needs to adjust if we want to compete with top teams year in & year out.

Don't overlook Van Buren. They are returning a lot of talent and have an excellent freshman guard.

My coach in high school, Coach Whited, didn't play high school basketball. He won two state titles & was an excellent coach. Basketball ability is a plus, but any coach who is going to excel will have to work hard @ a level that high school / college playing experience will soon have little impact on their coaching performance.

I hope the lady rockets win it all

I don't know for sure if she is returning, but I would guess that she is. I have not heard anything about her not returning and she has a boy basketball player in the middle school. It would be good for the school to give her a plaque thanking her. Also if any of the girl ball players are reading this you could come up w/ something to thank her for what she's done for the team (card, cake, etc). Coach Binkley also deserves credit for their improved play @ the end of the season. Specifically I thought he finished the season stronger in how to handle players, substitutions, defenses (depending on what lineup was in), and he deserves credit for trusting Coach Amy with all the team building activities. He adjusted his coaching style to the personnel he had around him.

Coach Russell does an incredible job @ motivating the young ladies. It really amazes me @ how well she gets them focused & having fun. She was about the perfect compliment for Coach Binkley as a coach. I've learned a lot from her about women's basketball from listening and watching her work with the high school girls. I'm sure when she gets a chance one day (if she wants that chance) she will make an excellent high school basketball coach. Its also important to remember that normally 2 coaches are going to be stronger than 1 coach. With 2 coaches you can break your team in practice up into separate groups & still have coaches giving hands on instruction to both groups. With 2 coaches your going to have a better chance @ players connecting with the coaching staff. If the girls continue to work hard & improve over the summer as they have this season they will be incredible to watch next season. They have a lot of talent & are definitely moving in the right direction. Keep it up girls!

The comments the assistant made were directed toward your fans talking to our girls. If our girls were talking to your fans they shouldn't have been, but @ the same time I heard your fans cussing around our girls.

In the two years I've been coaching at just the middle school level I've discovered that it is a much more difficult job than it appears. Its easy to be too my way or the high way and alienate your talent. Its easy to be too soft and never get anything done. It's difficult to keep your players focused when with around 15 players when it's almost guaranteed that one of them is having a rough day for reasons outside of basketball. Beyond that you have to mold those unique individuals and get them to appreciate being a team. As far as X's & O's are concerned there have been times I have been as frustrated as the next person. What bothers me is the way some people on coach t & at the games vent their frustration. Realize that if members of the team voiced their frustration in the same manner that they do the team would be broken (even if what they are saying is correct). Its amazing to see how many of the young ladies on the team act with class even when some adults don't. Either some adults don't understand the importance of team unity or perhaps venting their frustration is more important to them than team unity. A team can withstand some bad decisions easier than it can withstand being divided. This past season I had us in the either the wrong defense or wrong offense nearly 50% of the games in the first half. My girls knew early on that mistakes any of us made were mistakes the whole team made and and good things any of us did the whole team did it. If someone made an error it was as much my fault as theirs for not getting them ready or in the right position. If someone made a great play it is like my 6th graders did it because they were the ones practicing as hard as they could to push the other girls to where they would be ready to make that play. My girls were fortunate to be surrounded by adults in the crowd who were supportive also. It puts a kid in a tough position when she is being told to do one thing by her coach & another by her parent when they are taught to obey adults. I enjoy the fact that basketball is competitive. Competition with the risk of win or lose, praise or criticism make the game fun. I am not saying do not criticize. Just do it with a better tone of voice & also realize that some things are better corrected outside of the game. I understand that a game might be the only time you feel able to voice frustration over an offense, but at the same time a new offense cannot be put in in the middle of a game. If you are really concerned about winning the game at hand regardless of whether it is the best offense or not the girls need to be confident in it. Adults yelling how horrible it is at that moment is hurting your team. To those arguing on coach t about which player is better than who that is silly.

Fighting in a game is not an option. It seems as if some adults there didn't make that clear if they are coming down to the gym floor themselves. Discipline the players involved and ban the adults that hit into players from the gym. If Community has been outplayed this year why are they focusing on what others are doing & not what they need to fix? Blaming others especially the refs is teaching kids not to worry about improving but complaining.