Addressing a Team Practice

[Mark Padgett]

I have read through the thread with interest and thought I would put in my two shekels. In our local rec league, we have a policy of a ref making a presentation to all teams (we have over 125) at a practice. The presentation is somewhat "canned" and takes about 10 minutes. It does not cover the fundamentals of basketball, but specifically focuses on things such as waiting until beckoned when subbing, don't huddle on free throws, don't dawdle on getting into position for inbounds plays, how to behave properly toward the officials and the other team, and proper wearing of the uniform (correct color t-shirt under the jersey, tuck in the jersey and no jewelry). We emphasize our zero tolerance profanity policy.

These are boys and girls in grades 3-8. Usually we can get to 4 teams in one night per gym if we go at the practice time "turnover" from one hour to the next, since 2 teams share a gym for practice. Some of our gyms have 2 floors side by side, so we can reach 8 teams at once. Since we have about 40 refs, it's not much of a time-consumer for each one of us and the payoff is tremendous.