The Power of Practice

prac·tice [prak-tis] - (n) repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency; (v) to train or drill (a person, animal, etc.) in something in order to give proficiency (Taken from Dictionary.com)

By definition alone, it seems that practice is important, especially for a competitive team.   You show up to practice and you work on your dribbling, your passing, and other skills that you'll need in the hard fought battles you wage for 32 minutes.  And it's an expectation that after so many practices those things improve, and your muscles commit the required movements to what is referred to as muscle memory.   In a perfect world, this is exactly how it plays out.  But we are not in a perfect world...

What happens if you only halfway do the drills?  It seems like too many kids feel like they can just skate through practice, and then come game day, the stars will align and everything will go well.  But that just doesn't happen.  Now I'm not going to pretend that adrenaline doesn't kick in and help you get that extra speed, that extra "up" - I've been there and experienced it. But that adrenaline dies at some point, even faster when you are losing, and well, then what do you have to rely on?  As cliché as it may be, you play the way you practice.  Shooting is an easy way to see the translation.  A lot of kids see people like Dirk Nowitzki taking those off balanced fade away jump shots off of one leg and consistently making it, and then wondering why they can't do it.  Here's why - For starters, he has committed his release point, form, and hand placement to muscle memory through just practicing a straight up jump shot for hours, making sure each time it is the exact same.   Then he practices putting all of those things into his fade aways while working to commit the take-off and the lean to muscle memory.  In short, you have a lot of practicing to do before you get to that point.  No matter what the skill, if you don't practice it right, it's not going to come out right.  But again, I'm simply stating the obvious.

But here's one thing my team has taught me this year about practice.  Practice earns you respect.  I've always been one to think you earn your minutes in practice, and this season I've noticed that it earns you minutes with your teammates.  I've always been pretty quick to pick up body language, and when certain kids enter the game, you can see the body language quickly scream, "Oh no, this just got harder!"  As much as I would like to break this attitude, it's hard if that kid is constantly making the same mistakes at practice over and over again.  Am I doing what I can to help him out?  Sure.  My assistant and I both are.  But we can only do so much.  If he is consistently dropping passes that are right at him during passing drills in practice, can I blame the kids for not wanting to pass to him in a game situation?  Not really.  So now my challenge is rectifying this.  It's not just me that has to fix it though, that player has to want to fix it too. 

We've got a tough schedule coming up in terms of quantity of games as well as caliber of opponent, and if we're going to get through it, I'm going to need 10 players to contribute and trust in one another.  I have an idea in mind that should help put us in the right position to get the results we want from all 10 kids. It's not going to be anything close to easy, but if I wanted easy, I wouldn't be coaching.