Quote:
Originally posted by Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.
I just officiated a girls' jr. H.S. basketball DH last night and the coaches from both teams had not bothered to teach their teams any of the fundamental rules of the game:
1: One and one free throws.
2: How to line up for free throws.
3: When Team A scores a field goal, Team B inbounds the
ball along the endline under Team A' basket.
4: When an official blows his whistle, all of the players
are to look and listen to that official for information
as to what is going to happen next.
...
Fifteen minutes cannot begin to do justice to what we can and need to give to the young basketball players that we see every year. If a coach wants to give me only 15 min. then he is telling me that he really does not think what we officials have to say is very important.
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In addition to officiating basketball, I also coach youth soccer (currently U9---8 year olds---3rd grade) and have done so for 4 years. With the
beginning years of any sport, the coaches job is more to teach fundamentals and enjoyment of the game. I don't even bother to try to teach anything about the rules of soccer until it is called and the kids wonder what happened. Even though offsides is enforced at our level, I have never tried to explain it since we've never had it called. I've got many more important topics to cover: dribbling, passing, trapping, spacing, defending, shooting, etc. They will benefit far more at this age from that than any real discussion of the rules. Just this year, we've had to concentrate on legal throw-ins. Last year, it was just get the ball back into the field.
I tell the kids to just keep playing until they hear the whistle...the ref will tell them what the call is. If they wonder what happened, I tell the subs on the sideline and later tell the ones that were in the game. Most rules situations would just go over their head until they see it happen.
Now, at 7th/8th grade, the kids are more educated and able to understand things that my kids are not. However, it would still be a general waste of time to cover any more than just a few basic things. They can only absorb so much at once. After that point, it is pointless....
Did he say it was a travel for the dribbler to bounce the ball off the backboard and catch the ball if the three points were not in the frontcourt while the defender was in a legal guarding stance with less than 0.3 seconds left in overtime after a designated spot throw-in after a foul that resulted in a correctable error of cancelling an unmerited FT while the subs were standing and the offical was counting to 10????
Just teach them to dribbler, guard, pass and shoot. The rest is secondary at that age.
[Edited by Camron Rust on Sep 25th, 2001 at 07:28 PM]