When coaching youth basketball your focus is on the fundamentals. The first basketball drill introduces them to footwork. The second one emphasizes dribbling.
Footwork Drill
Here is something I do with the group age of 6-7 year olds. I want to start introducing them to footwork.
I get a piece of chalk and on the ground start writing/drawing some footwork that I want them to do (i.e. reverse pivot, jab step, forward pivot and others).
I start them off in a line and one at a time they go through all the stations, each time they get to a certain spot on the floor I yell out what move they are doing, so hopefully they will start remembering what they are doing.
It helps if you have an assistant to do the same moves on other side of court that way they don’t get bored standing there.
With older kids or as this group starts getting better they have to start yelling what footwork they are doing.
At the end of season it has helped them prepare for moving up or just getting familiar with the footwork part of it.
Dribbling Drill
To help the kids break their habits of catching the ball, and immediately putting their head down and putting the ball on the floor and dribbling, we deflated one of our basketballs in practice and made them do full court drills and scrimmage with a ball that is flat.
Not only did they learn to play with their ‘head up’, they started seeing the floor, their teammates, and making better decisions. We went from 4-5 assists a game to over 15, and won 10 of our last 13 games of the year.
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