Kids 7: Jets

Always pit your jets against each other in competitive drills and running. Keeps them honest. Tell the whole group, (while looking at the jets once or twice) –

“Football is not about how good you are, it’s about how good you can be.”

“Some blokes are naturals. Naturally fast, natural eye-hand, naturally strong. So what? Big deal. You should get best on ground. How hard you try is the only way to measure yourself. To be better, to be as good as you can be.”

If you did a scale of who your best players were, than did another scale of how hard players try to be better than they are, they would look nothing alike. Nothing.

Time and again I would tell the jets who got a lot of touches, and a bit ahead of themselves, “The really good players are the ones who make their teammates better.” I’d try to make that, not B.O.Gs, their goal.

 

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Comments

  1. This rings true to me too Matt.

    My boy, thanks to a growth spurt and a couple of seasons under a great coach, started to dominate the scoring for his basketball team. Not in a very high grade, but it was nice to see him start to realise what he should be capable of.

    However, having spent so many seasons so far watching the couple of better kids dominate possession and shooting, and how much more fun it is for everyone when the whole team is involved, his mum and I challenged him to expand his game. “You get [insert reward here] if you have more assists than goals this week,” and the like. All of a sudden he was dishing off on fast breaks and enjoying his teammates’ success, while still getting his usual share of rebound/putback scores. He knows when he’s put in and when he’s played for the team, and we dole out more praise for that than whatever his points score might have been.

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