Cheaters never prosper. Right?

This is started as a “venting” type text message to a coaching friend and evolved as my fingers swiped my iPhone so try and follow me here…

We can agree that players have the most chance for individual improvement during the offseason when you can break a kid’s shot down, focus more on small details and more repetition over a longer per of time compared to the regular season, right? And in the end, as the head coach it’s really our responsibility this gets done. However, the way the rules work is that we can not do anything basketball related with our players until mid June…and that window closes in mid August.

This essentially gives us 8 weeks at max to work with our players at that micro level. But now throw in the fact that most of our kids are multi-sport student athletes, or at least we promote and encourage them to be, so that window is shared with other sports, especially fall sports because it is the next season coming up.

Our options in the spring and fall are limited to AAU, spring & fall leagues, trusting our players to work on their basketball skills without us there to teach and correct them (even using a “volunteer” isn’t nearly the same not to mention that those are few and far between).

AAU can be a good option but again kids are playing more games than practice plus an AAU coach’s style could be completely different than mine. Some players play at different levels so even keeping them playing together isn’t a gimme. Spring/Fall ball is fine but again there’s no practice involved and there’s no real skill development or teaching going on.

I understand there needs to be limits to how much practice we can have with our guys, but we also need more access to our kids during the offseason if we want to make them the best players they can be. This not only gives our teams the best chances to succeed but it also gives the individual student athlete the best opportunity to advance their career academically with the assistance of sports.

Now this is only an issue for those who follow the rules and restrictions that have been put in place.

So how does that saying go, “Cheaters never prosper”?

Right. Well I guess they just get better.