Alien Pedagogy

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about basketball. We won the last game of the season (57-19), though it was our only win of the season. Still, it was the best way we could have won the season.

I found myself very proud to watch my team playing so well by the end of the season. I could see their growth as basketball players and as a team.

Some goals for next year:

• I will try harder to create a sense of team identity / spirit next year. This year I focused on persistence, but I think next year I’ll go for a sense of creating memories by creating good plays. Maybe “What will you remember by the end of this season?” will be my sales pitch.
• I really want to focus on basic skills at the start of the next season.
• I need to learn more about the dynamics of the game before I’ll improve as a coach.
• I also need to learn the more minute rules.

Some reflections:

• Grade 7 & 8s are very different than grade 9s.
• I had so much support from my P/E staff as well as my student manager.
• There’s a great deal of good that comes from competition, but I have also seen sport drive people to act rather horribly.
• I am very a competitive player but when it comes to coaching, I think it’s more important to produce sportsmanship than victory.

It was good to coach, but it will also be good to have that time back for preparation and marking.

My Under 14 Boys team was thrashed yesterday by a team that I found difficult to believe was under fourteen. They were giants.

My team did well. They never gave up and their plays reflected the maturity and discipline that they’d brought to the game.

I coached my first basketball game. We lost spectacularly.

However, it was really fun. We’re going to work on playing a tighter game now. That means finding the open man, changing from offense to defense, and attitude.

I’m now coaching under 14 basketball.