Hoops

U/20 Nationals

Not sure I understand all the angst about the role of reserves here. And this comes from someone whose daughter was overlooked for an 'injured' player (actually just wouldn't travel and trained at home that weekend) and missed out on the State team - something which has held her back significantly in my opinion.

It happens.

Coaches pick their teams - THEIR teams - to run the stuff they want to run and to suit their philosophy - some finish first, some finish last. Administrators occasionally stick their heads in and make comments or promote the cause of kids who have a future in the game. Often this doesn't make sense to the casual observer.

But nobody makes these kids try out, nobody makes them accept the role of the reserve and no coach I have ever come across has deliberately treated a kid poorly.

I'm delighted that a couple of kids who have been 'long-term' reserves in the past will make the NSW 20's as their first State team this year. They've made the most of their opportunities as reserves as opposed to whingeing about the injustice of it all.

Seeing as how I'm having a bit of rant, I wonder where the people who are so poorly treated would have been yesterday. For the past four days, I have run a 'training' session for our local association kids who are going to Country Tours in the next week. Just an 'opportunity' for them to prepare well and perform better when they go away. Not compulsory, the teams have been picked, I wont coach any of them while they are away. Four days, eight hours total, 20 kids (including a couple of 'reserves'). I was on the court, with help from a recently graduated U/18, while the parents of the other kids sat in the stands and chatted (and maybe complained about selection processes, the biases in the way I treat their kids, how I praise my own daughter too much and theirs not enough, how I speak poorly to X and favour the girls over the boys. Who knows, maybe they went home and got on Hoops and complained about the State selectors and coaches.)

And after the session I went around and closed all the fire doors (our local association doesn't feel its worthwhile opening for these kids in the holidays), was thanked by all of the kids (and none of the parents) and went home to look after my own kids.

NSW 20's women will have a full team at Nationals!! Had more than 4 at their trials but fair to say there could have been more (WNBL girls not available).

Timing of 20's tournaments and corresponding trials not good - many candidates just finished HSC (or equivalent and haven't played for four months). Know of a coupleof kids who couldn't make up their minds about 20's, but having played the PSG tourny and got the HSC out of the way were keen again - albeit probably too late for most coaches.

At what point did it become a divine right to be selected in every team for which you tried out. The prestige or credibility of every team should be directly related to the number of people who are eligible for selection in that team and consequently the difficulty in getting selected - hence State teams are harder to make but more prestigious to make.

I would identify a key ingredient to being successful as missing out on a team AND coming back for more. Teaches you about whether a kid wants to be good and is prepared to work at it or would just like to be good until something is put in their way. If they are cut and don't try out again then you'd have to say the coach made the right call!

I know of a number of kids who rather than play Div 2 as a bottom-ager, quit playing. They obviously don't want to play that much.

Check the correlation between 16's teams and the corresponding age group four years later at 20's - surprisingly few constants in that time. The kids that make it are the kids who went again after missing out at some stage.

Is there an ABA Ladder on here somewhere?