YCA`s first clinic a success in many ways

As some of you know I`m running a project here in Hørsholm Basketball that I call Young Coaches Academy and the main purposes of this is too educate new, young coaches and make it a little bit easier in becoming a coach.
That is done with different actions like, miniclinics theoretical and on the floor, leadership education, talks with leaguecoaches about coaching and so much more.

One thing is also that YCA aims to arrange two clinics each season and the first one was held on the second of march 2011.
I had four coaches doing clinics, 3 of them had 30 minute clincs and one of them had 1 hour clinic.
I have uploaded the clinic to youtube and the quality is what it is, but clinics you are suppose to see live, so see you next time. Next clinic will be in september of 2011 and will be teamoriented, while this clinic in the spring always will be on foundamentals, individual focus.

Here are the clinics:
Here is the first clinic of the evening and its Coach Igor Gavrilovic that talks and shows drills, technic in passing.



Second clinic with Coach Michael Boje-Formann about running technic, footwork, explosivness and more


The third clinic which is one hour by Coach Jan Mikulowski about outside/insidemoves from the perspective, what does the defense give you?
(clinic is divided into 5 parts because of problems with camera)











The last clinic of the evening was by Coach Johan Enbom, who had about functional strength training.




Next clinic will be in September and will have subjects that is teamoriented.
Hope that more take the opertunity too learn in September, YCA is here to stay

An All-Star saturday in Hørsholm

Well, guess I have to explain the lack of entries on the site, but its just simply because of me working a lot and the lack of energy to do it. I have tons to write about, but I need sleep and to relax also :-)

This saturday I went to the gym to watch the second practise of Point Guard Academy whick is a project started by Johan Enbom and its purpose is very simply. In countries like denmark, sweden there is no excuse not to have the best Point guards, that is something we always should be able to create. The lack of size is a fact and to produce bigmen or big women players, well thats more wish than something that can be done reguraly at least.

They will have 4 days per year where they will preach the game from a PG`s point of view and giving the players that attend a golden chance to take the next step.

Anne Thorius former great danish womens player is a big part of the PG academy and what can be better than to learn from a former players that knows what it takes. Whom has played at the top level and has skills to teach it and the CV to back up what she says.

I enjoyd what the where doing, but it looked like a shock for most of the players and it shouldn`t be like that. The foundamentals of the game, leadership, skills needed shouldn`t be news at these ages, but it looked like that from my point of view. Hope that the players take their new stuff with them.....

Coach Enbom and Coach Thorius preaching the game tot he Pg`s

The players clinic even got visitors from Stockholm Sweden in Coach Øhrn and Coach Karlsson from Solna Vikings, they took the car down to Hørsholm to watched the two practises that PGA had this saturday, this is passion for the game and a hunger to learn new stuff.

The eagle has landed with his cam

After the PGA, it was time for the danish womens all star game between danish national team (coached by Johan Enbom) and the best of the rest. Danish and forein players combined to play under the coach Arnar Holm, normally SISU coach.

Like most All-Star games its not so exciting and well played but its a game that always should be there in every league. Of course you can work on how to play the game and work on that the players don that little extra in game. A normal game called Allø-Star game just doesn`t bring that feeling to me at least. Let me see some behind the back passes, no looks, alley hoop plays and in a mens game give me some of that funky nasty dunks.

The 3 point competition I enjoyed and the winner made the last shoot to win it.










This was my saturday in DK and it was a good day :-)

Wednesday night special

Wednesday nights are special nights for me since our ladies team headcoach Johan Enbom has very early morning practise on thursdays, so he sleeps in my apartment. Two coaches in a 2 room apartment that means a lot of basketballtalk.

Last night I had a pretty bad fever so I told JE that I will not be so social and propably sleep when he arrives, but that didn`t happen. Somehow I managed to stay awake and we talk and talk......
I found this funny picture about comunication. Where are back to tappin again :-)

Why I`m I charing this with you?

Well, a big part of development as a coach is to talk basketball with different people and everybody no matter what level you coach at needs somebody to exchange thoughts with or you will get stuck in a certain mindset.

I always found that the thing that gave med the most at basketball educations from the federation was the talks before and after with the other coaches. So many different minds, ages and levels, thats some great talks and you go to bed at night with new thoughts.

One of the subjects we talked about is that clubs and coaches needs to get in a mindset to develop players for the highest european levels and not be satisfied with winning the nationals or some tournament.
The belief has to be there among the coaches for it to succeed and the clubs needs to have a mindset to wanna or at least have the ambition to play as much as possible against other top european teams.

My mindset is I`m a coach in Hørsholm Basketball, but I coach for the danish federation and their nationalteams. Thats my highest goals to develop players for the nationalteams and I think at least with that mindset you will try to the best of your possibilities to make your players ready for Europe and not the national competition.

Behind this mindset there is of course the most important thing and thats the players and nomatter what ambition they have I will do my best to teach them as players and humans and support them as long as the show up for practises and do their best.

I heard a great coach once say "There is only one stupid players and thats the one which doesn`t wanna learn anything new" and I have tried to live by that since.

In the nordic countries we cant be so selectiv that you can be in other more basketballcountries, we have to have everybody along for the ride, maybe not in the same team, but the has to be a place for everyone.
I think thats great, but of course it makes the demands on coaches abilitys much higher, since you can not only focus on the best players at the time.
Thats also something to think about, many players/athleets develops late and maybe, maybe you just cut the next Michael Jordan from your team at the age of 12.

Congratulations!

That winning feeling

...well had a game today with my boys 98 and as "usual" we where gonna play a team with just 97 born players and if you ever coached this ages, you now how huge the pshysical differences are in just this age. Just one year is a huge difference.

We have had really good pratices last 2 weeks and ( Coach Enbom has written a blog about quality practises ) and I have added some pieces to their toolbox. Just before our game the mens team had practise and I think my kids impressed som of them since they stayed for awhile and watched.

We played really adult i offense moving the ball very well and attacking and shooting at the right times. Sometimes we drop a little in balltempo, but since we play without any screens at all, this is not so strange. I have nothing against screens, I love screens....but I want them to learn movement without the ball and spacing and more before we go to any screens in our offense.

Biggest problem in the game is that the other team zagg off our players and they are most of them much taller and we get "confused" in shootselections since we are open on every ballcatch. We had som bad shoots, but like I wrote before we played adult and smart.

Defense is extremelly hard since we are so much smaller, but today we played much tougher, but boxing out is a problem when there is 1 year, 20kg and 30cm height difference :-) But, they tried....

This was our first win against a 97 team and we had the shivers in the last minutes and they came closer and closer, but you have to get used to winning to be able to handle the "pressure" in the end off games.

We won today with 3points and believe me if we played like we did today and lost I would smile all the way home anyway. Now I got double joy since we played well and won also......can`t wait until next practise.