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How to encourage a basketball player


3 Ways to Encourage Your Players to Motivate One Another

by Evan Davis, on Nov 20, 2021 10:30:00 AM

You know that motivating comes with your job: it’s what you aim toward as a coach. You have the unique opportunity to work with a group of talented and devoted individuals and to inspire them by offering sound advice and your heartfelt encouragement. Coaches bring out the best in their players, but they don’t have to be the only ones. By teaching players to never blame one another for mistakes, to bring out the best in one another, and to respect fellow players, you can help your players motivate each other just like you do.


1. Don’t Let Your Players Discourage One Another

As a coach, you’re trained to tell when there’s disharmony among a group of players. No one’s talking on the bench, or a star player has lost faith in everyone else and is attempting to carry the team on his or her back. Discord among players is toxic to the unity of the team.

As a coach it is your job to stop behavior that makes players doubt their abilities, or convinces them they’re not a valued member of the team. Encourage your players never to allow any other player to feel like they have personally failed the team, especially if that player is feeling bad enough about his or her own performance already. Set an example by speaking to and encouraging players even when they aren’t playing up to par. Look for and reinforce uplifting gestures like players patting a teammate on the back who has just fouled out or been substituted.

More established players have the potential to be leaders. Discuss their position on the team and encourage them to act as role models. It’s important these players don’t overlook more inconsistent or inexperienced players for failing to play at their level, but instead pass on to them the leadership skills and sound decision-making they have accumulated.

2. Bring Out the Best in One Another

Both in practice and during the game, players have the opportunity to not only put on their best performance, but to augment the abilities of other players. Good habits start with practice, so make sure players know how important teamwork is in practice. This is why a lot of drills involve the team working together, not just shooting individually. Players coordinate their efforts through such exercises as passing during rotations, performing rebounding exercises together, and opposing one another on drives. Players motivate one another by challenging each other, finding one another with sound passes so it becomes a habit during the game, and learning to recognize their teammates’ movements and abilities.

By game time, bringing out the best in each other should be a habit. Players will feel motivated knowing they’ve already worked together, and that they can trust one another.

3. Teach Your Players to Value Their Teammates and Show Respect

Respect is a huge motivator for players because it makes them feel valued on the team, and therefore more comfortable around teammates. One of the best ways to teach players respect is simply by setting an example: even if you need to point out flaws in your players’ performances, never critique them in such a way that you devalue them as a team member. Show them that your suggestions come from a desire to yield improvement, not a lack of conviction in their abilities.

Do not tolerate players who insult other players on or off the court, or refuse to respect any teammate the way they would want to be respected. Praise players who show patience and acceptance toward other players, even when they have difficult performances. Encourage your captains and stars to set an example for newer players by showing them firsthand that they play for a team that is grateful for the physical and emotional contributions of all its members.

As a coach you are a motivational figure for your players, but that role doesn’t end with you. Teach your players to motivate one another and bring out the best in each other just like you strive to do for them. Pass on the baton to your players and let them motivate one another during practice and games.


Read our top 10 motivational quotes to help you and your team get excited and motivated for the season! Also, be sure to follow us @drdishbball on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok,  Pinterest and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more motivational content.

Coaching Tips To Motivate Your Basketball Team

There are many different ways to motivate your basketball team. While some methods may work better than others, finding the best way to motivate your unique team may take some time. Every team is different, there are some tried-and-true methods that seem to be effective for almost every team. Here are a few of our favorite motivational methods which can be used as a starting point, but feel free to adjust and adapt them to your unique team and vision.

Peaks and Valleys

Every basketball team goes through peaks and valleys—it's a part of the game, but those moments of high and low can also cause a rift in team motivation. During a peak, a team will likely fuel their own motivation by feeding off of success plays and crowd enthusiasm, but during a valley, a team lacks the energy needed to fuel their own motivation.

While it can be challenging and frustrating for both you and your team, it’s important to encourage your players to continue giving their all, even during a valley, as it will serve as good practice and experience for your next game.

Rewarding Your Basketball team

One way to motivate your team during these rough patches can be to use some kind of reward system. For example, you could set benchmark tasks to be completed throughout the peaks and valleys of the game, and if those benchmarks are met, then players are rewarded with an early shower, a water break or even a shortened practice. If the marks aren’t met, the team has to clean up after practice, get to practice early or do extra reps or drills.

During valleys, benchmark tasks can be anything from making a certain number or percentage of free throws, three-point shots and drives for layups, or during peaks, suggest more difficult tasks such as half-court shots, one-on-two offensive shots or precision passing techniques. Feel free to encourage your players to work together to set goals for the team to promote ownership and challenge each team member to play their best every game. While these drills should be a fun challenge for your team, keep in mind that you need to follow-through with the reward system.

Productive Discipline

According to the Positive Coaching Alliance, the best way for basketball coaches to enforce good discipline is to remain calm, create consequences and be consistent. This doesn’t include negative feedback or becoming visibly angry with your players; rather, productive discipline focuses attention on establishing a strong coaching philosophy and culture with your team members and parents at the beginning of the season. By doing so, you are setting your expectations and the tone for the rest of the season.

Motivating The Team To Behave

While this may be enough for some players, there are times you may still have to address undesirable behavior. The Positive Coaching Alliance suggests a three-pronged approach: reinforcing good behavior, ignoring the behavior you don’t want and, when you’re left with no choice, intervening with a ‘least attention’ manner. The first two steps are fairly straightforward. Acknowledge and reinforce the behavior you want to see from your athletes based on the guidelines and culture you established at the beginning of the season. For players who are misbehaving, sometimes the most effective strategy is to disregard the player and their actions completely. Oftentimes, after taking away their attention completely, children will typically want to regain the attention of their coach and will start to comply with the previously established rules.

In some cases, ignoring misbehavior is not an option, especially if the athlete is putting herself or other teammates at risk. When you have to intervene, it’s best to do so with the ‘least-attention’ possible. We suggest calmly calling the player to the side and asking him or her to sit out until they are ready to obey the rules. You may have to repeat this step if the player continues to disregard team rules. When it comes time to check in with the player, encourage him or her to verbally acknowledge why they were asked to sit out and to commit to following the rules from now on.

Although following this approach can prove to be challenging—especially when you’re trying to remain calm in the midst of a big game—you’re setting a positive example for your players and their parents, teaching them to learn from their mistakes and keep moving forward.

Praise Drives Team Motivation

Positive reinforcement, more commonly known as praise, is generally welcomed by all players. Praise your players, both in times of success and defeat. Offering simple words of encouragement and praise can give your players the boost they need to finish the game strong.

Praise doesn’t have to just come from coaches. Encourage parents and even team members to praise each other for good work on and off the court. Coming together as a team to create a positive environment for each and every one of your players is the best way to motivate your team to play their best.  

Motivation the SquadLocker Way

SquadLocker motivates your entire basketball team by offering sports apparel and gear that they can feel proud to wear on and off the court, featuring brands such as Under Armor, Adidas, Nike and more. Set up a Team Store to purchase quality sports gear, customized with your team’s logo. SquadLocker is ready to motivate your basketball team by making them look and feel good!

Psychological preparation of basketball players | Physical education

Author: Poletaeva Nina Petrovna

Organization: MBU SShOR "Yunost"

Settlement: Belgorod region, Stary Oskol

CONTENTS

Introduction

3

1.

Content and tasks of psychological training of basketball players

3

2.

Types of regulation of mental states of an athlete

4

3.

The content of the psychological preparation of basketball players

4

4.

Literature

10

Introduction

Basketball is the most important means of physical education aimed at increasing the efficiency and improving the psychophysical qualities of those involved. This is an exciting team game that contributes to the development and improvement of the physical, mental and intellectual qualities of a person; players' mastery of professional motor skills and abilities. Basketball instills in athletes willpower, endurance, perseverance, courage, determination, self-confidence, a sense of duty and responsibility, patriotism and collectivism. The effectiveness of the education of these qualities depends, first of all, on how purposefully the relationship between the physical, psychological and moral education of athletes is carried out in the training process. The training process in basketball is built on increasing the complexity and intensity of training sessions, acquiring special knowledge by players about the psychophysiological properties of the individual, the structure of the body and the biomechanics of human movements. In the process of detailed preparation for a long season full of various competitions and, directly, in the lessons on the technique and tactics of the game conducted by the coach, athletes acquire the necessary professional knowledge, skills and abilities to increase the variety of individual and team technical and tactical actions of basketball players. This suggests that the key to the successful performance of a basketball team in competitions is the high sports training of players (which is mainly realized in sports training), which includes all aspects of preparing athletes for a long sports season (theoretical, technical, tactical, moral-volitional and psychological). Thus, sports training is a complex specialized process aimed at the formation, development and improvement of the necessary physical, psychophysical and psychophysiological qualities of players, which has a versatile effect on athletes.

Basketball is a team sport that requires full dedication from each player in changing game episodes on the court; it allows you to develop endurance, good coordination of movements, flexibility, mobility and jumping ability in the game. It is an excellent school for teaching the interaction of players in a team, because success in the game depends not only on the developed eye of the athletes, but also on their ability to understand the intentions and tactics of other team members. An important factor is the ability of players to make instant decisions, taking into account the game situation on the court, since the specifics of the game involve sudden changes in direction and pace, which alternate with forced jumps during shots, fighting for a high ball and trying to cover the throw. The main task of the coach in preparing for the sports season is to gradually lead the players to optimal physical, technical, tactical and mental readiness.

  1. Content and tasks of psychological training of basketball players

Psychological preparation is understood as a pedagogical process of formation and improvement of personality traits important for sports and mental qualities underlying them, in other words, psychological preparation can be understood as the process of forming a sports character [5].

The character of an athlete is determined by the properties of the personality, which is formed by fixing the necessary psychological states caused by certain mental processes. In terms of the psycho-pedagogical theory of activity, the management of mental states and the education of personality traits are correlated as a means and a result.

In this case, the mental state is understood as the corresponding attitude of the athlete to the world around him, which can arise both under the influence of external influences of the coach (external regulation of mental states), and due to the efforts of the athlete himself (self-regulation of mental states). Consequently, the coach, in addition to his own influence on the athlete's psyche, must teach him the methods of self-influence, which will significantly increase the effectiveness of the process of psychological preparation.

  1. Types of regulation of mental states of an athlete

J. Wooden notes the importance of psychological training in basketball: every coach must know psychology and be a psychologist. Speaking about the “pyramid of success” he developed, which is based on diligence and enthusiasm, and faith and perseverance help to reach the peaks, he writes: “We all differ in our abilities. Some may have more abilities than you, they may be bigger, faster, stronger and have superiority in other physical qualities, but no one should surpass you in such very important qualities and characteristics as team spirit, enthusiasm, hard work, cooperation, constancy, determination, honesty, sincerity, reliability and integrity. Acquire and keep these qualities - and success is guaranteed" [2].

The need for special psychological preparation for sports competitions is clear to anyone who is preparing himself for a career as a basketball coach. Preparing a basketball player for high sporting achievements is a long process that requires certain lifestyle restrictions associated with the need for large time expenditures to participate in training. Therefore, it is important to form an appropriate psychological attitude not only to sports competitions, which are a bright holiday, but also to the heavy gray everyday life of a long training process.

All of the above allows us to consider the content of the psychological preparation of basketball players in three interrelated blocks: 1) psychological preparation for the training process; 2) psychological preparation for competitions; 3) regulation of mental states in a particular match.

Hence there are three general tasks of basketball players' psychological preparation:

— to form a positive attitude to the training process;

— to form mental qualities that contribute to success in competitions;

- create favorable mental states in a particular match.

  1. The content of psychological training of basketball players

High results in modern sports require many years of intense sports training and a lifestyle subordinate to it. The athlete must be psychologically prepared for this. Such preparation is carried out in the course of the sports training itself due to the constant formation of motives that are the motives for sports and training activities, or through the creation of favorable attitudes towards various aspects of the training process. This division is conditional, since motives can be formed, in particular, through the creation of appropriate relationships. However, the specificity of motivation requires its separate consideration. The process of formation of motives and attitudes towards sports training, in addition to external regulation by the coach, can be carried out, as noted above, by self-regulation. This is an important component of the content of psychological preparation for a long training process.

From here it is possible to formulate particular tasks of psychological preparation of basketball players for a long training process:

— to form motivation for the training process;

— to form relationships that ensure the success of the training process;

— teach methods of self-regulation of psychological states.

Analysis of numerous scientific and popular literature on psychology,

experience in psychological counseling of game students and a series of experimental studies conducted jointly with students of the Samara State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, allowed the author to come to the following conclusions.

The desire to train can arise in a player without the influence of external reasons, arbitrarily, from the awareness of sports training as a goal, from interest in the game, the desire to improve one's skills, etc. It can also be caused by external factors, such as punishment and encouragement, threat and demand, group pressure, expectation of future benefits, etc. All these incentives

for sports training (in any activity in general) are called motives in psychology.

Motivation is the most important part of the learning process, and coaches are doing the right thing by focusing on this aspect of training. Most often, a coach motivates his players using rewards and punishments.

However, it is quite clear to specialists that when a coach is concerned about raising the level of motivation of his players, relying on their self-esteem, common sense and the need for self-improvement, he achieves better results.

According to special studies of foreign sports psychologists, among the motives for going in for sports, attractive for young people can be considered the possibility of maximizing their abilities, the ability to control oneself and the environment, and achieve physical perfection.

Less significant motives include the desire to be a “real man” (for boys), achieve social status, or receive large monetary rewards.

Setting distant goals. Winning a city, country, world championship, or the Olympics are examples of far-reaching goals. The coach must show the player a series of intermediate goals, the successive achievement of which will lead the player or team to achieve far distant goals. At the same time, it is important that the achievement of the first intermediate goals is difficult, but real, allowing the athlete to experience a sense of success. Gradual achievement of goals after intense training contributes to the formation of an attitude towards a serious attitude to the training process.

Shaping and maintaining a mindset for success. At the heart of these actions of the coach is the encouragement of the development of the sports ambition of the players. Among the means of forming and maintaining the attitude to achieve success or develop sports ambition, one can note the promotion of the athlete's success. This is facilitated by the constant posting of statistical reports on the achievements of basketball players in individual components of the game on the wall of the gym, the creation of stands with photos of the best players and sports trophies of the team, mentions in the media about the sports achievements of individual players and teams, etc. At the same time, the coach must control the process of the formation of sports ambition and prevent it from turning into the form of sports vanity.

The optimal ratio of rewards and punishments. The most common means of increasing the motivation of players to the training process is the coach's assessment of their performance in the form of praise or disapproval. Any of these methods are more useful than the coach's markedly indifferent attitude towards a player with insufficient motivation. The issue of preferential use of praise or disapproval is decided based on the needs of a particular pedagogical situation and the player's personal characteristics, and in this sense, the behavior of the coach should be quite flexible. In addition to praise, real symbols of the players' achievements are used as an encouragement: badges, diplomas, tokens, medals, prizes, etc.

Emotionality of training sessions. It is understandable that praise or disapproval by a coach elicits an emotional reaction from the players. Thus, motives are closely related to emotions. In other words, if the training process is not emotional enough, it is difficult to maintain the necessary motivation for it.

The increase in the emotionality of the training process and the corresponding motivation for it on the part of basketball players is facilitated by the inclusion of outdoor games in the training, the competitive method of organizing exercises, the introduction of background music into certain parts of the training, the presence of spectators at individual training sessions, the encouragement of the emotional behavior of the players, the emotional behavior of the coach himself .

Development of team traditions. The formation of a close-knit team of players and team spirit is one of the important means of increasing the motivation of basketball players for the training process. When a player begins to feel that his personal efforts help to solve collective problems, he has a different attitude to the training process. The development of the team's traditions is facilitated by the unified sportswear of the players, the organization of festive rituals, for example, on the birthdays of the players or the reception of new team members, commemorative tournaments and tournaments of team veterans, festive evenings after the end of the season, etc.

Special decoration of the room for the team, as described by B. Knight, can also become a tradition.

Motivation is a year-round process. Players need to know what we expect from their games. We have a lot of slogans that we put up in the team room. One of them: "Victory loves those teams that are less likely to make mistakes." Basketball is a game of mistakes, and the team that makes fewer mistakes has the best chance of winning.

Pete Newell, who in my opinion is the best basketball coach in the world, shared this view: “Basketball is a simple game. You must hit more accurately than the opponent and make more throws. If you hit more accurately than they do, it says about your attack. If you hit more than they do, it speaks to your defense."

Another of our slogans: "Calmness and movement equals an accurate throw." I also encourage mine to read and leave materials in the locker room that I believe will help the player in their development as both a citizen and a player, motivation keeps your players doing what is necessary to play basketball successfully.

Making collective decisions. Discussing the goals and particular tasks of the training process with the team, making collective decisions on training and lifestyle issues under the guidance of a coach significantly increase the players' motivation for the training process. An excellent example of this is the experience of B. Knight.

Goals are set for the whole team, in accordance with this, static information is collected at each game, with which the players get acquainted after the end of the game, dividing it into three groups - attack, defense and general. On the side of each goal, leave a place to mark the result. If we have reached the goal, we write down the percentage in black, if not, we make a mark in red. Goals should be challenging enough, but achievable. We've maxed out at eight goals in a single game, and have averaged five goals in every game over the last two seasons.

Attack targets: field goals - 52%; free throws - 75%; losses -10%.

Objectives of defense: 1) to prevent the opponent from scoring more than 65 points per game; 2) to prevent the opponent from exceeding 42% of the effectiveness in shots from the field; 3) prevent any of the opponent's players from scoring more than 20 points; 4) force the opponent to make 214 losses.

General goals: 1) to score first in each half; 2) pick up 58% of all bounces; 3) commit no more than 16 personal fouls; 4) make 12 throws more than the opponent.

If you achieve all these goals, it will be impossible to lose. It is not enough to tell a player to play to the best of their ability. This task must be specified in numbers.

At first glance it seems that Knight is talking about a special psychological preparation for the competition. However, it is not difficult to imagine how the players begin to relate to the training process after making these kinds of collective decisions.

Personal characteristics of a coach. A strong motivating factor in the conscientious attitude of players to the training process is the personality of the coach himself.

To quote B. Knight again: “Motivation starts with the coach. We must motivate ourselves daily. I try to do this by going to every training session, counting everything from the moment I enter the court, for example, if there is any of the players that I need to reprimand in order to set them up for a good job.

Among the many characteristics of a coach's personality that help motivate players, one should first of all name confidence, exactingness, optimism and perseverance, curiosity and professional intuition.

The coach must be confident in his competence and the decisions he makes. We must remember: the fact that your team is not in the top three, and you yourself are not yet part of the coaching elite, constantly mentioned in the media, does not mean that you cannot train. Your confidence instills faith in your students.

The coach must be equally exacting (we are talking about discipline) to all players. Otherwise, he will begin to lose confidence in himself. It is good if behind his firmness the players will feel friendliness, respect for themselves. In the end, the success of the coach and the success of his students are interdependent, which is a sufficient basis for mutual respect.

Coach's optimism helps players to overcome the inevitable difficulties of the training process. Everyone understands that it's easier to be optimistic when your team is winning. If she loses, it is useful to recall the statement of Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci that 90% of their experiments ended in failure. But they were persistent, and this ultimately determined their success. Remind your students of this.

Dictionaries define curiosity as the desire to acquire new knowledge; inquisitiveness. At first glance, the coach's curiosity concerns only himself. In fact, everything in the communication between an athlete and a coach is interconnected. An inquisitive coach is always eager to learn more about the secrets of his profession. His wide erudition helps him explain to the players the patterns of the training process and the need to use certain means of training in it. Knowledge of this kind helps players to form a meaningful positive attitude towards the training process.

But it's not so much about this, but that the training process is too multifaceted, and each player is too individual to give recipes for all occasions in advance. The most necessary at the moment ways of influencing students, including to increase their motivation, the coach helps to find professional intuition, the development of which is determined, on the one hand, by practical experience, and on the other hand, by the desire to acquire new knowledge, or curiosity.

Summing up, it should be noted that, according to one of the country's leading hockey coaches V.V. Tikhonov, the final meaning of the coach's activity is not physical, technical or tactical training, but the formation of the will of the ward. And the development of the will is associated primarily with the formation of a rich motivational and semantic sphere of the players. And the coach must know how to do it.

In addition to the formation of players' motivation, the coach's task also includes the formation of a system of attitudes towards different aspects of the training process. "The system of relations determines the nature of the experiences of the individual, the peculiarities of the perception of reality, the nature of behavioral reactions to external influences." The elements of the system of players' attitudes to the training process are the attitude to sports training in general, the attitude to physical activity, the attitude to training sessions, the attitude to the sports regime.

In order to create a positive attitude of players towards sports training in general, the coach should not determine the team's starting line-up during the pre-season. It is better for him to constantly change the starting five so that the substitutes do not feel useless. According to B. Cosey, the late deadlines for determining the starting five make the entire team take a more responsible attitude to the training process.

D. Wooden advises ending each practice session on a positive note so that the coach and players look forward to the next session. If the coach and players end a session in an irritated or pessimistic state, they are unlikely to look forward to the next session and have to start under difficult conditions that might not be there.

Fear of large training loads is basically removed by good motivation. Hockey coach V.V. Tikhonov talked about the "barriers" that are built in front of each athlete and coach in his activity and which must be overcome in order to move on. His main ideas included the following provisions:

1) there are no limits in loads;

2) the idea that one should take care of oneself is wrong. As soon as the thought of “saving” oneself appears, the athlete ends there: he was unable to overcome such a barrier;

3) the athlete must strive to be in peak form all the time, avoiding a drop in form.

V.V. Tikhonov sees it in breaking the barrier of fear - the fear of burden.

D. Wooden also talked about the experience of developing positive attitudes towards large training loads through the collective acceptance of what he called “training rules”. Here are some of them: “Never think about your bruises and fatigue. If you are tired, think about how your opponent might have run out of steam”; “The condition is improved by hard training work after you are exhausted. Force yourself to work when you get tired”; "Set a goal for yourself to be in better condition than your supposed opponents." Copies of these jointly agreed rules are given to each player on the team, after which, according to Wooden, he must either agree with them or leave the team.

Practice has shown that following the principles formulated above significantly speeds up the process of transferring the nature of the team's activities from collective to joint.

References:

[1] Vavilov A.L. Group cohesion, individual readiness and effectiveness of the game of the basketball team // Actual problems of human knowledge in the field of

educational activity: materials of the annual scientific session of the BPA on May 25

2000 - St. Petersburg: BPA, 2000.

[2] Wooden D. Modern basketball / Per. from English. and foreword. E.R. Yakhonotov. - M .: Physical culture and sport, 1987.

[3] Gomelsky A.Ya. Basketball team management. - 2nd ed., add. - M.: Fizkultura i sport, 1985.

[4] Gomelsky A.Ya. Prove yourself right by winning. — M.: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1987.

[5] Gorbunov G.D. Psychopedagogy of sports. - M.: Physical culture and sport, 1986.

[6] Daimatsu H. Follow me / Per. from Japanese. Foreword O. Chekhov. - M .: Physical culture and sport, 1972.

[7] Cretty B. J. Psychology in modern sports / Per. from English. Foreword V.V. Davydov. - M .: Physical culture and sport, 1987.

Published: 05/31/2022

ASB young coaches. What is it like to manage almost peers? / Student Basketball Association

Or even older...

Basketball players are often sure that they know how to pick up the keys to victory and would look good on the coaching bridge. Some still choose this path at a very young age. In this article, we will tell the stories of four aspiring mentors, three of whom are younger than many of the players in the Association. Difficulties, grinding, punishments and rewards - read about all this below.

Vadim Kurashov (MIREA, Moscow)

The head of the men's team of the Russian Technological University MIREA is now 25 years old. There are guys on his team with whom he played in the ASB, but the coach himself currently only plays in the MLBL for MGPU-2.

Vadim admitted that he has to raise his voice, but in general he tries to communicate calmly. The only exceptions are matches, where it is not always possible to restrain oneself.

Sometimes it happens that the players do not agree with the instructions of the coach.

“Yes, everyone has ambitions and emotions! We still do not have a professional team, so we try not to punish harshly for disagreement. These conflicts and disputes are resolved by conversations.

There have not yet been situations from which something negative would result. We always understand each other at the end of the conversation,” Vadim assured.

If we talk about subordination, then it only works in the gym in the team. Outside of it, there is communication on the same level. According to the coach, the atmosphere inside the team is great, so most players know how to divide moments into working and non-working. But even in training, the mentor and subordinates often allow themselves to make various bets, for example, on the topic of accuracy of hits. In the game, such things are already taboo.

Daniil Chudinovskikh (Reaction-VyatGU, Kirov)

Reaction-VyatGU is a fairly new project in itself, created on the initiative of active students. The team was led by only two people, and both of them were young.

Daniil is at the helm of his team for the first season, but has already managed to lead it to vice-championship in the regional division "Vyatka". Here is how the 23-year-old young man briefly commented on his work.

“The players observe the subordination towards me, even though there are two guys older than me in the team. Everyone calls me by my first name because it makes me feel more comfortable. I don't have any problems with managing peers. Probably only raised his voice a couple of times and that's it. As for communication outside the site, sometimes we spend time together,” said Daniil.

Kirill Denisov (SPbGUAP (w), St. Petersburg)

We learned about the guys who manage the guys. And what is it like for a young man to cope with girl students? This was told to us by 21-year-old Kirill Denisov from St. Petersburg University of Aerospace Instrumentation (Division "St. Petersburg-2").

“Difficulties arise in leadership, but not global ones. Age in this case is not a problem, it's more about the specifics of women's basketball. But I think that I have almost got used to it, it remains only to gain even more experience. Yes, it happened that the girls did not obey, but the disagreements could be resolved immediately. I try to find an individual approach to each basketball player, especially when it is difficult for some to enter the training process, ”said Kirill.

When a team brings together young representatives of the stronger and weaker sex, then naturally the issue of presentability becomes very relevant.

“I know that when I first joined the team, the aspect of appearance was given attention. They are greeted by their clothes. Now I'm less focused on it. The girls themselves try to be always beautiful. Some put on makeup before the games, and almost everyone always complains about broken nails, ”said Kirill.

Kirill is trying to make sure that the team remains a team off the pitch. So, for example, in the 2018/19 seasonat the Belov League qualification, they all lived in the same apartment. Personally, it was very interesting for him to be surrounded by so many of the fair sex.

Not without incidents. They mainly concerned the entrance of the coach to the locker room after the game. It used to come in at the wrong time.

Anastasia Savinova (YaSMU, Yaroslavl)

23-year-old Anastasia is a player-coach of the women's national team of YSMU (Yaroslavl region division). In a conversation with us, the girl did not deny that she behaves quite strictly with her teammates.


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