[Nevadaref]

When I saw the PC terms of woman-to-woman defense and a coach yelling "get you girl" posted on this board, it made me harken back to my one and only coaching experience.
I was a 17 year-old HS kid and my little sister was playing in a girls summer league. They had just finished 8th grade and were entering HS in the fall.
They lost their first game by 20+ and their coach yelled at them after the game and walked out with just under a minute to go in the game. The parents who were there were quite upset by this and unanimously decided they didn't want him as coach anymore. Call it a case of parental firing. So my dad volunteered to take over. Sadly, he didn't have a clue about basketball, so he naturally turned to me.
Not being very sensitive to boys/girls issues at that age, I may have approached the situation incorrectly, but I decided to treat them as basketball players and not girls.
We spent the first half-hour of the next practice just talking about who I was what I thought we should do to win. I said we would play like my high school BOYS team. Man-to-man D, press, run, foul hard, push people, grab jerseys here and there, etc. (I got ejected/DQ'd for fouls many times from HS games. Stunning that I am now an official isn't it?)
I brought some of my friends to practice and we showed them how to box out, use a drop step, and play physically. Essentially, we took the ball made them hit and foul us to get it. I never used girls terms or treated them in any way differently than I would have a team of boys.
Anyway the point is that the girls loved it. They didn't care that I told them to find their MAN after we scored, or that I diagrammed plays to get the ball to our post-MAN. They were competitive individuals who wanted to win. They were too young to care about political correctness. A few times after games I heard them proudly tell their friends from the other teams that the reason we beat them was that we run boys plays. My treatment of them had earned their respect and instilled some self-confidence and pride.
So next time you are concerned about PC terms on a basketball court remember that those you are dealing with may not care, so why should you. Kids perceptions are often funny, quite possibly by changing BASKETBALL terms to make them appropriate for girls we may be sending negative messages these youngsters. They may perceive that because they are girls they can't play the same game, or that they aren't any good. While I don't expect many girls to beat boys in athletics, I see no reason to put this in their young heads.

To conclude I'll just add a bit about how that season ended:
After 8 weeks of these physical practices in which we spent time diving for loose balls, fouling instead of giving up easy lay-ups, and playing "hands-on" defense, we found ourselves at 10-2 and playing the same team they had gotten thumped by in week one, prompting their coach to exit, for the league title.
It wasn't even close. This time we won by 20. I have never seen a group of young girls so excited. They really were jumping on top of each other and screaming. Of course at my age that made me just want to cover my ears and run away!
The Friday we had a team pizza party and they gave me a little red plaque. The top line said "Hawks Coach" then it had my name under it and at the bottom was "You're the Best! Thanks for making us basketball players." I still have it. (So we might have more in common than just rules knowledge, HawksCoach!)
Four years later, I came home from college for spring break and a couple of my buddies and I went to the HS state tournament. We sat in the first couple of rows and ate popcorn, hotdogs, and of course, booed the officials. After the 4A girls game we were sneaking out the players/coaches exit because it was much closer to where we had parked when three girls from the winning team came down the hallway towards us. One of them stunned me by remarking "Hey!" grabbing me in a big hug and planting kiss on my cheek. It turned out that they were three of the players I had on that summer team. Apparently, I hadn't changed much since they recognized me, but from 13-14 to 17-18 they sure had grown-up and I couldn't have picked them out of a line-up. They told me that they had "been really good" ever since I coached them and that they still ran some of "my plays" and had even convinced their HS coach to put the "fouling drill" into practices. I didn't know what to say other than congratulations as they were back-to-back state champs.
If I were to coach again, I think I would do it the same way.
Thanks to all who read this for letting me share.