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It's all trips
down basketball memory lane for me now. My knees are bad and my waistline is giving me difficulties moving about. Then also I smoke...
posted by
Friar__Tuck
on March 19, 2004 at 7:40 AM
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Friar
I like these posts about basketball and your obvious love of the game. Many of them remind me of my own schoolyard playing days and the more recent school days of my son when I coached children as young as six, in a 6-8 age bracket, through twelve, in an 11-12 bracket. My favorites were the kids from age eight through ten. They were coordinated enough to actually play something that resembled basketbal, and they were thirsty enough for knowledge to learn the fundamentals and the work ethic I tried to instill in them. The youngest age group was a delight, but suffered from short attention spans and a lack of the the unique coordination required to excel in the sport. The oldest age group was the most difficult because they no longer wanted to listen to their coach. They were convinced they had already learned it all by watching the NBA superstars.
I also enjoyed your account of being a practice player against a women's team. I used to ask the parents to encourage their children to watch women's college basketball instead of the college men, or the pros. The women played a more fundamental team-oriented game. The kind of game budding young stars could actually learn something from besides shake-and-bake moves, dunking, and 3-point shooting. Alas, it rarely worked. It is little wonder that so many young players are so poor in the fundamentals that should have been mastered before they advanced to the highest levels of play.
Still, I miss those days. Thank you for helping me to remember them.
posted by
notapoet
on March 18, 2004 at 12:39 PM
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