Essay/Term paper: Evalution of my coaches

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Critical Essays

The Evaluation of My Coaches
Throughout my high school basketball career I experienced several different coaches.
Every new coach brought a different approach to coaching. The varying techniques of coaching
brought about different attitudes and expectations during practices and games. I found that during
practice, coaches had either the nice-guy or the drill sergeant approach. They also had different
methods of coaching during and after the games.
Practices are very important to basketball. If you practice hard and take it seriously, your
team can become successful. All of my coaches in high school took practices seriously. I basically
had two different types of coaches when it came to practice. There was the drill sergeant type,
which had the team line up in the same place every day to do our calisthenics before each practice.
The team captain stood facing the rest of the team and lead us in various stretches and other
warm-ups. The coach was very strict. No horse play or unnecessary talking or anything else we
knew would make the coach mad. Coach would have us do drills having to do with the plays we
ran during the game. If we made a mistake coach would stop us and make an example of whoever
messed up. He would say, "Did everyone see what Bryan just did? That is what you should not
do." He would then gripe a little and after that we would continue our practice. I feel that this
method of coaching during practice made my teammates and I closer as a team during the game,
but we always dreaded practice. I prefer the nice-guy coaching method during practice. This
makes practice more fun. The coach is serious about making our team better, but he realizes that
people are not perfect. During calisthenics he would talk to us about our day at school and tell us
dirty jokes, and just try to be our friend. While we were practicing he pointed out our mistakes,


but when we did something good he praised us. This made practice fun and everyone was more at
ease during practices.
All of my coaches gave a pre-game and half time pep talk. One of the coaches I had
would tell us how the other team played, who we needed to keep from shooting, and then tell us to
go out there and kick some butt. This was his basic pre-game pep talk. At half time, if we had
been playing bad, this coach would come in the locker room cussing. He had a pace-maker and
when he would get mad at us you could hear it going tick, tick, tick, tick rapidly. He was a little on
the crazy side. Other coaches, during pre-game pep talk, would tell us a little story that would
move us in such a way that made us want to play hard and win. During half time if we played
horrible every coach I had would come in cussing. If we had been playing good some coaches
would come in say, "Good game." then leave. Others would come in and point out specific things
that we did good. The coaches that came in pointing out specific good points about the game was
my favorite.
The attitude of any one coach was different if we won the game or if we lost the game.
Let's take, for example if we won the game. No matter if the game was close or not every coach I
had would come in the locker room a congratulate each player individually. Then they would
address us as a whole team and tell us we all did a great job. It was a different story if we lost the
game. If the other team was really good the coaches would come in and tell us that we tried our
best, but the other team had talent. If we lost because we played bad some coaches would come in
and yell at us. Others would say, "You guys know what you did wrong and I don't feel like talking
to ya'll right now." The next day at practice we would go over the things we did wrong in the
previous game. The team did not like to lose.
I believe that it is good for a basketball player to experience all different types of coaches.
If I was a coach I would have the more laid back approach. A basketball player plays the sport
because he or she loves the game. If a coach is always negative then the player will not be having
fun. This discourages the player and could possibly lead to them quitting. You do have to correct

players when they do something wrong or you would not be doing your job as a coach, but it can
be done in a nice way. I only had one coach that was out there to have fun and that is the
basketball season I enjoyed the most.