Ep 376 Are You Sure the Kid Heard What You Actually Said?

Cuts During Tryouts Links mentioned in this episode TeachHoops.com NukeHydration.com — clean sports drink started by a sports mom and dad out of Mississippi. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off your first order CoachingYouthHoops.com — build a custom practice plan or print and go. As Coach Bill puts it, more state titles than ChatGPT Are You Sure the Kid Heard What You Actually Said? Cut conversations, and the telephone game that follows. The follow up to tryouts: the conversations nobody wants to have. Cutting a kid, or moving a player down from the top team. The goal is not just delivering the news. It is delivering it without killing the kid's enthusiasm for the sport. Coach Bill's rule of thumb by age: Eighth grade: parent and kid together. Seventh grade: depends on the situation. Sixth and below: the parent first. But he always offers the same thing. "I'm happy to sit with both of you, and I'm happy to talk to them specifically about what they need to work on." He encourages families to take him up on it. His reasoning is the heart of the episode. You can say the exact same words to two different kids. One hears a challenge: wasn't my year, next year look out. The other hears you do not like me, I'm horrible, I'm quitting. Same words, same delivery, completely different landing. You have to know the kid, and the parent. Coach Collins had a long, blunt conversation with his son Drew after his sophomore year about what his role would look like as a junior. Coach Kevin Klagos and other assistants were in the room. By the time Coach Collins got home, Drew's mother was waiting at the door, ready to let him have it for telling Drew he would never play for him. That is not remotely what was said. He had to call time out, walk back through the actual conversation, and offer to get Klagos on the phone because Klagos heard the whole thing. What was actually said was here is where you fit and here is what you need to work on. What Drew heard, and what Drew relayed, was I'm no good and I won't play next year. His takeaway for every coach listening: what you say to a kid is not what reaches the parent. Ever. It is a game of telephone. That is exactly why the age of the kid determines who is in the room. And one more rule from Coach Collins: do not post it, do not put it online. Talk to people. Coach Bill pushes for the actual language. What do you say to a sixth grader, or their parent, when what you really mean is not good enough? Coach Collins' structure: Start positive. Here is what your kid is genuinely good at. Name the gaps plainly. Here are the skills they need to get better at. Reframe the comparison. It is not that your son or daughter got worse. Other kids got better and worked on those things, and we are moving them up. Give them the runway. You have 364 days. Here is exactly what to work on. Land on the upside. This is a better fit for the level and the teams they will play. More playing time, more reps, more chances to develop the skills they could not get otherwise. Coach Collins' best analogy, straight out of Madison. The city runs the biggest outdoor swim meet in the country every summer, with something like twenty public pools feeding into an event called All City at the end. When the seven year olds swim the 25 freestyle, there are roughly thirty five heats of it. The whole beauty of it is that every kid is in the heat that matches their time. Eight swimmers per heat, and if you win yours you get a ribbon. The top eight in the city are in the top heat. Everybody else is racing someone they can actually race. The kids leave those pools smiling. They competed. Nobody got lapped. Basketball cannot sort that cleanly, and both coaches acknowledge it. But that is what a coach is trying to do. Not rank kids. Put them in the right heat. "Who else got cut?" Or "how many?" Or "who did you keep?" Coach Bill admits he struggles with this one, because nobody wants to be the only one. That is embarrassing. And when a kid truly is the only cut, the obvious follow up is why cut one kid at all. Coach Collins' half joking answer: I can only keep ten. Well, keep eleven. I only have ten jerseys. The real answer is that the gap between the tenth and eleventh player is usually enormous, and that it is about level, not about the number. There is also a safety piece Coach Bill raises. Is it actually safe for this kid to be on this court the way they are right now? Coach Collins' addition: and would they even be happy there? Coach Collins' youth program has had sixteen kids show up for fifth grade. You cannot carry sixteen. So you are cutting four to six kids, or you are telling families to go find four more players and another coach, and nobody wants to do either. Sometimes twenty kids show up and only one parent volunteers to coach, and then the program has one team whether it wants to or not. Coach Bill's advice for the parent who says they have never coache