"Oh good! I can put the balls away!

After the season has ended whether you lost in the first round of the tournament or won it all, the high school season will eventually end. In most states, its on to spring sports! You may even be coaching a spring sport. I, for a number of years, went from football to basketball and by the time the basketball season had ended I was emotionally and physically exhausted.

Personally, I disliked the end of the season because of all the duties I had to complete to wrap up the season. Taking inventory was at the top of my dislike list. Chasing players down to turn in gear. Contacting parents. Sending home bills to pay for items not turned in or lost. Yuk! Then there was the prep for the year end banquet. Player evaluations. Thank you emails and letters to write. Coaching staff decisions to consider. Are you going to consider coaching next season? If you are the lead coach, are all members of the coaching staff coming back? Are you going to be able to make suggestions on things such as equipment needs, scheduling, facility changes, etc. The list goes on and on. If you are a lead coach, I think it is very important to ask the other

coaches for their input concerning improvements.

One area I felt was very important to do after the season was to conduct player evaluations. We used a form to begin the evaluation. We gave the player a copy and we filed the other copy. I never coached in a large school so we seldom had a need to have tryouts in the Fall. We did, however, tried to be very honest during the post season player evaluation. If we had players who we believed were not likely to see being in a position to play significant minutes, we tried to give them options such as; playing another sport, becoming a manager, or, if they could have a positive attitude come out, but realize they might not see much playing time. This was often very difficult, but we felt it was important to be honest with our players. During this evaluation conference, you may want another coach to be present. We felt this time of year was a good time to give some of our players future options to consider.

Now we also spent time in the Spring, preparing for our summer basketball camp. Scheduled summer practices, and scheduled three or four summer tournaments. We tried to find tournaments that played during the week rather than weekends so players and parents could schedule their own activities on the weekends. As I have stated in previous posts, we conducted our own summer camp. It was usually the first or second week in June.. We then had 90 minute practices twice a week for our returning varsity and junior varsity players. All our summer practices and games were finished by the end of July. ALL summer activities were voluntary. We tried to schedule practices and games around other summer sports or camps. Some conflicts did result and we NEVER questioned or penalized any of our players who missed any of these summer opportunities.

Yes, you can put the balls away at season's end and take them out next Fall. My experience tells me that if you do .... your program will not reach its potential. For us, the struggle was trying to determine or reach a balance. Personally, I do not believe trying to practice everyday in the summer and playing in a tournament every weekend makes sense. We tried to find a balance.

*This is just my humble opinion, but I did not like to participate in local summer leagues. We rather participated usually in tournaments that required some travel. We preferred one day tournaments. I did not like local summer leagues for several reasons. First, the leagues that I saw were often poorly organized and very poorly officiated. Second, I wanted our players to compete against stronger teams we would never play during the season rather than playing teams in the summer we face during the regular high school season.

"You know I'd swear that rim was lower yesterday?"