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As a coach at the JHS, HS and college levels for over 15 years, I understand the levels.
First of all, any coach worth anything will teach "help" defense within the man defense. So, don't penalize a team for learning good help defense at the JHS level. Hopefully, league organizers will understand this.
Secondly, when I started out at the JHS level, we were allowed to teach and coach a zone defense. I believe that the kids deserve to learn to work offensively against a zone. This requires good ball movement, ball fakes, driving and penetrating the zone and, of course, good shooting. There are those who will say that you need to concentrate on teaching man to man defense. Well, my experience tells me that I can teach good man defense in 2 weeks but I can't teach good shooting, ball movement and all the other components of good zone offense in 2 weeks. Defense is a whole lot easier to teach than offensive skills.
As a side note, I think I have seen more illegal screens in JHS ball this year than ever before. The main reason for this is coaches not teaching the players to USE the screen. The player with the ball dribbles so far from the screener that you could drive a truck through the space. The poor kid setting the screen has to move 5 feet laterally in order to get close to the defender on the ball. This is just poor coaching and the kids get penalized. The player for whom the screen is being set must take their defender into the stationary screener. I always told my players to brush shoulders with the screener. This rarely happens.
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