Coach Marmo guides Warriors U13 player David Griffin through a jump shot as Pete, Rob and Andy from IWC observe.


Rob, Andy and myself all went along to observe the Hertfordshire Warriors Basketball Club's junior team practice in Bushey on Wednesday. Many thanks to Coach Tony Marmo and his assistants for being so welcoming, helpful and interested. The site of three observers on the sidelines may well have caused a bit of interference for the coaching team, but everyone seemed to stay focussed and keep their sense of humour and we learned a lot from what we saw.

As an orientation exercise in preparation for our pilot Basketball Coaching for Self-Belief training day, the evening was invaluable. The boys stayed focussed and gave 100% for the whole two hours and obviously had a warm respect for Coach Marmo and his team.

So, from an Inner Game perspective, the all important ingredient of mutual trust had been successfully forged. From watching the set-drills we were able to pick out many critical variables which could be used to raise awareness with effective questioning, such as speed and trajectory on passes, height of bounce on dribbling (lower was safer, but how low is the optimum for each player?), knee bend, positioning of arms and elbows, timing of the ball release and focus on the back edge of the hoop with a jump shot, keeping the ball away from the defence when running in to shoot with a layup and awareness of the positioning of both teams whilst running set plays during a game. 

I think it's safe to say that with trust, a directive style of coaching is certainly more effective than without it. We observed choice and feedback staying with the coach throughout the session. Questions were phrased to reinforce set learning points and because of this were all leading questions, as the coach knew the answer he wanted before asking the group. And it worked - we saw learning, practice and increased levels of performance in a session which clearly everyone enjoyed. 
 
The question for us is about what difference it would make to this successful mix by giving a little more choice to the learner and by increasing awareness with effective questioning and empathic listening. Andy is hoping to organise a demonstration with Coach Marmo at one of the Warrior's sessions in the near future - watch this space!


Pete*