Practical Tips for New High School Basketball Players (From a Parent Who’s Been There)
The first day of JV basketball practice last fall, I waited for my son Javi in the high school parking lot, picking crumbs of granola bar out of my cupholder and listening to a podcast I’d already heard half of. When the door to the gym swung open, he came out first, hood pulled up over his curly hair, new team warmup already smudged with knee dirt, and dropped straight into the passenger seat without saying hello. I asked the first question that popped into my head: “How’d it go?” He stared at the cracked dashboard for a minute, then said, “Everyone’s 6 feet tall and they all played travel ball for three years. I suck. I don’t want to go back.”
I almost said the generic stuff people say: “It’s just about having fun,” “You’ll get better with time,” but I held back. I remembered being a new high school athlete myself, and that kind of empty encouragement just made me want to quit faster. Instead, I turned the car on and said, “Wanna stop at McDonald’s for fries on the way home? We can figure this out later.”
Over the next four months, we tried a bunch of small, low-effort things that worked way better than I expected. None of it involved expensive private training or hours at the gym every night. It all just fit into our normal routine, and it made a bigger difference than any big, dramatic pep talk ever could.
The first change we made was cutting extra practice time way down, not cramming more in. Javi was ready to hit the gym for two hours every night after school to “catch up” to the guys who’d been playing longer, but he already had three hours of homework and a chemistry test every other week. He was burned out before he even started improving. I suggested we do 10 minutes a day, five days a week, of just one thing his coach said he needed. His coach had noted Javi kept losing the ball when defenders pressed him, so we dragged a $10 agility ladder we found at a garage sale out to the driveway, and did 10 minutes of low dribbling and pivot moves before breakfast. Some days our dog chases the basketball and we have to start over. Some days Javi skips because he overslept before a midterm. No one yells, no one keeps a strict log. After three weeks, he came home saying his coach told him his footwork was already better than half the guys who’d been on the team for a year.
Next, I got him to talk to the coach for 30 seconds once a week, instead of hiding in the locker room and bolting right after practice. Javi’s always been shy around authority figures, and he’d rush out with the other freshmen before the coach could even say anything to him. I told him he didn’t have to give a big speech or beg for more playing time. All he had to do was stop on the way out and ask one specific question: “What’s one thing I should work on this week for practice?” He did it the next day, and came home saying the coach told him to stop chasing every steal and just stay in his defensive position. That one tip cut the other team’s fast breaks three different ways in the next scrimmage, and the coach high-fived him after. It was such a small interaction, but it made Javi feel seen instead of just another warm body at the end of the bench.
I also changed what I ask him on the drive home from practice and games. The first week, every time I asked “how did you play?” he’d mumble and stare out the window. I realized that question makes him think I’m grading his performance, whether I mean to or not. Now I ask, “What’s the dumbest thing that happened at practice today?” Nine times out of ten, he laughs and launches into a story: the starting center tripped over his own feet during layup drills, the coach accidentally threw a basketball into the Gatorade cooler, the upperclassmen pranked a freshman by hiding his sneakers under the bleachers. Half the time, he’ll bring up the bad stuff on his own after that—how he missed two easy layups, how he didn’t get in the game at all last Friday. But he brings it up on his terms, not because I’m prying for details to judge.
When he wanted to quit halfway through the season, after three games of only playing two minutes of garbage time each, we didn’t force him to stay for the whole year or let him quit that day. We made a deal: he just had to stick it out through the first round of playoffs, which was six weeks away. If he still hated it and wanted to quit after that, he could walk away no questions asked. He agreed. Two weeks later, the starting point guard sprained his ankle, and Javi got 12 minutes in the last regular season game. He didn’t score, but he got two steals and didn’t turn the ball over once, and the whole bench yelled when he ran back on defense. That didn’t magically make him a star, but it gave him enough of a push to get through those six weeks.
Right now, it’s the end of the school year. Javi still didn’t start more than one game all season, and he’s still four inches shorter than most of the other guys on the team. He still complains that the upperclassmen take the best fruit punch Gatorade from the cooler and leave him the warm lemon-lime that no one wants. Last week, he dragged the agility ladder out to the driveway before school, though, and asked me to toss him balls while he did pivots. He’s trying out for varsity again in the fall. Some days he talks about quitting if he doesn’t get more playing time next year, and some days he talks about being a starter by his junior year.
None of this is a big inspirational story about turning a walk-on into a star. It’s just a bunch of small, boring things that worked for us, when we had no idea what to do with a 14-year-old who felt way out of his depth. I don’t know if he’ll make varsity, or if he’ll even still be playing this time next year. But for right now, the 10-minute driveway drills and the silly question on the drive home are working, and that’s enough.
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