Youth Sport Challenges

Do you love your kids and want the best for them? Me too. Let’s prioritize them together.

My challenge for you — put the kids first, not your ego, image, or your record. Prioritize their development and love for the game. Ask other coaches to participate in this challenge with you. Adversity Strengthens.

I’m revolutionizing the way basketball is taught and played. Here's five of the ways I’ll do it.

1. Give advantages -

Basketball’s hard, getting good takes time. While getting good, players get frustrated and often quit for sports where they can have more immediate success. Why? We enjoy the things we improve in. We need to create advantages to allow kids to improve and enjoy the game. Youth basketball needs advantages, not obstacles. 10 ft goals, big heavy balls, 94 ft courts & lots of people make it hard. Give kids a chance. Build-in advantages that make the game age appropriate.

2. No excuses -

Youth basketball is full of excuses, often modeled by adults. Make youth sports a no excuses space. These excuses are often a result of wrong-minded goals. Change the goal from status-and-outcome driven to development-and-process driven. Excuses will evaporate. You’ll be amazed.

3. Level Up -

Comparison is not competition. Don’t get it twisted. Competitiveness is a skill that we must intentionally grow. Comparison is the thief of all joy. The root of competition is to rise together. We rise when we encourage each individual to compete and level up their own game. How can you grow competitiveness and not comparison? Start measuring things. Measurement is magic. Measure the athletes scores in their developmental training. Test and test again. Recognize and reward them as they level up. Provide incentives. Video games shouldn’t be more addicting than basketball. Create fun and engaging ways for youth to level up in their sport.

4. Challenge -

Resiliency is a much greater indicator of elite performance than any technical skill (according to European premier leauge soccer clubs). We must make this a priority for youth basketball. Give youth players appropriate challenges. Attainable, but not easy. Difficult, but not out of reach. As they progress, move the target. This grows resilience.

5. Get messy -

Youth basketball is an absolute mess. Don’t shy away from the fact that it will get messy, lean into it! Don’t let perfection get in they way of improvement. Don’t wait for a perfect situation to dive in or for a perfect solution to work the problem. When it gets rough, it gets rough. Mistakes are valuable. It’s okay to make a mistake while trying to help. That’s to be admired. You can learn from that. What’s bad is doing nothing. That’s failure. Failure is getting frustrated and complaining. This is the basis of your participation and for the approach we must model for our youth. As always, I’m here to help. Tyler Coston