Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball

About the Product

You volunteered to coach the basketball team, but are you really ready? How will you teach the fundamental skills, run effective practices, and harness the energy of your young team? Fear not: Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball has the answers.

In Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball, longtime coaches Keith Miniscalco and Greg Kot share their experience and provide advice you can rely on from first practice to final shot. From evaluating players’ skills and establishing realistic goals to in-game coaching tips, it’s all here—the drills, the plays, the fun.

Develop your team’s dribbling, passing, shooting, and rebounding skills with the Survival Guide’s collection of the game’s best youth drills. For plays and sets that young teams can actually run, flip to the Survival Guide’s offensive and defensive playbook. And to get the most out of every practice, follow the ready-to-use practice plans.

Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball has everything you need for a rewarding and productive season.

About the Author

With 19 years of youth basketball coaching experience and 8 years of coaching high school, Coach Keith Miniscalco knows how to develop youth players to excel at all levels. He has coached both boys and girls in several acclaimed Chicago park district and youth school leagues, including Our Lady of Lourdes and Queen of All Saints grade schools, Loyola Academy High School, and his own highly respected Over the Edge youth basketball travel program. He cofounded and currently runs Over the Edge in Chicago. The program's goal is to prepare youth-level players for high school competition. It has seen great success and has proven to be extremely effective for young athletes who wish to continue with competitive basketball. In 2008 Coach Miniscalco was named the boy’s varsity coach at Northside College Preparatory in Chicago. He lives in Chicago.

A full-time music critic for the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot fills much of his spare time coaching with Miniscalco in their Over the Edge program for youth basketball players. An accomplished writer, Kot has been the Chicago Tribune's pop critic since 1990. He is a regular contributor to numerous national publications, including Rolling Stone, and cohosts the nationally syndicated radio show Sound Opinions on public radio. He authored the acclaimed rock biography Wilco: Learning How to Die in 2004 for Broadway Books, and his next book, Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, will be published by Scribner in 2009. Kot lives in Chicago.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Help! Where to Start?
Chapter 2. Organize Your Team Practices
Chapter 3. Offensive Skills and 10 Simple Drills
Chapter 4. Defensive Skills and 10 Top Drills
Chapter 5. Your Can’t-Miss Offensive Playbook
Chapter 6. Sure-Fire Defensive Sets
Chapter 7. Special Situations and Plays
Chapter 8. Game Time! What’s My Role Again?

Words of Praise

"Keith and Greg are to be congratulated for providing a simplified book of basketball skills, drills, techniques, and plays for youth basketball. With this survival guide, your season will be more productive and enjoyable for you and your players."

Dick Baumgartner - Director of Dick Baumgartner's Shooting Camp

"Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball is a wonderful book that provides insight, concepts, humor, and truth--which have all been tested. It is a must-read."

Tanya Johnson - Head Coach of Loyola Academy's Varsity Basketball

“Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball is a crash course in how to teach the basic technical skills of basketball. It’s a must-have for introducing young players to baseline basketball Xs and Os.”

Amy Tocco - Executive Director of the American Sport Education Program