Middle School Sports - Development or Winning?

Middle School Sports - Development or Winning?

  • Development

    Votes: 20 90.9%

  • Winning

    Votes: 2 9.1%
  • Total voters
    22
Yappi

Yappi

Go Buckeyes
Is it for development? Or is it for winning?

Just recently heard about a varsity coach that had a middle school team that was struggling to win. The middle school had a large roster and everyone got to play. Star players played more than weaker players but everyone saw the court. Varsity coach told the middle school coach that their job is to win and they must make changes. After the changes, 4 players were sitting the bench the entire game and never stepped on the court. The team did begin winning.

So do you agree with the varsity coach that the middle school is about winning?

Have you ever heard of a similar situation? I've heard it in reverse many times where middle school coaches forget they are there to develop players for the high school and do everything they can to win. That is when I've seen varsity coaches step in and remind them that winning is secondary to teaching fundamentals and getting players ready for their high school years. The varsity coach doesn't need anyone's help driving kids away from the sport when they are 12-14 years old.
 
 
I think development, But the program from top to bottom must be committed to it. You can’t have it both ways. Either you go all out with development or are you just throw caution to the wind and make it about winning.
 
I think you need to bridge the gap between them. MS should be mostly about development but you need to be successful enough that the kids want to come out and play.
The way I think is most successful is to spend the majority of the season working on development but if you have some form of postseason tournament then you play to win.
 
How about both? Skill development while also instituting a winning culture: i.e. playing time dependent on effort, attention to detail, etc?

Winning games? Not so much. One of our league rivals used to win 5/6 grade games by 30+ points running sets and having their best player score 25/game. We pressed teams off the floor in jr. high and beat teams by 50. Not sure any of it will matter at the varsity level.
 
So this reminds me of a story that was posted on here 15+ years ago. It was a story about a coach that had a perfect season in 8th grade middle school basketball. Every game was a blowout. It was arguably the greatest season in this school's history. But what made it a national story was that the coach was fired at the end of the season for poor performance.

The team started with 12 players. First few games, only the starters and a couple bench players got any minutes, even in blowouts. Some players left the team. Couple more weeks, more of the same. More players left the team. By the end of the season, 5 players that were starters and got almost all of the minutes were the only players left on the team. I'm sure at the end of this season, that coach was very proud of a major accomplishment but most people looked at him as a total failure. I'm one of the people that looks at him as a failure.

IMO, a middle school's job is to get players ready to play HS. knowing how HS sports works, kids decide they don't want to play a sport anymore, they decide to concentrate elsewhere, they get a job, or they get a girlfriend. Sometimes they make bad choices and sports aren't an option. Some kids may choose to go to another school. And one of the biggest culprits of middle school success and failure in HS is the early maturing players that are done growing. They may dominate at 5'10" in middle school and never see the court in HS. For all those reasons, trying to win at middle school at all costs is a foolish decision. Any reasonable HS coach wants their middle school to supply them with quality kids who have the right attitude and develop their skills to a point that the HS coach can refine them.

I can't count how many times we've heard stories about kids walking the halls that could be star athletes. When it is just a life choice, not much you can do about it. But if your middle school coach ran that kid out of sports, shame on them.
 
Follow up question. Should middle school be about overall development or development centered around what the HS team does?

For example, should the middle school work on the zone if the HS only runs man?
 
CedarBuck92 said:
Follow up question. Should middle school be about overall development or development centered around what the HS team does?

For example, should the middle school work on the zone if the HS only runs man?
Click to expand...
I think that high quality programs have the kids learning the HS stuff down the line. That's one of the things that makes it a program, not just a series of teams at different levels.
 
Yappi said:
So this reminds me of a story that was posted on here 15+ years ago. It was a story about a coach that had a perfect season in 8th grade middle school basketball. Every game was a blowout. It was arguably the greatest season in this school's history. But what made it a national story was that the coach was fired at the end of the season for poor performance.

The team started with 12 players. First few games, only the starters and a couple bench players got any minutes, even in blowouts. Some players left the team. Couple more weeks, more of the same. More players left the team. By the end of the season, 5 players that were starters and got almost all of the minutes were the only players left on the team. I'm sure at the end of this season, that coach was very proud of a major accomplishment but most people looked at him as a total failure. I'm one of the people that looks at him as a failure.

IMO, a middle school's job is to get players ready to play HS. knowing how HS sports works, kids decide they don't want to play a sport anymore, they decide to concentrate elsewhere, they get a job, or they get a girlfriend. Sometimes they make bad choices and sports aren't an option. Some kids may choose to go to another school. And one of the biggest culprits of middle school success and failure in HS is the early maturing players that are done growing. They may dominate at 5'10" in middle school and never see the court in HS. For all those reasons, trying to win at middle school at all costs is a foolish decision. Any reasonable HS coach wants their middle school to supply them with quality kids who have the right attitude and develop their skills to a point that the HS coach can refine them.

I can't count how many times we've heard stories about kids walking the halls that could be star athletes. When it is just a life choice, not much you can do about it. But if your middle school coach ran that kid out of sports, shame on them.
Click to expand...
I had a JH team like this once. After the second game, I spent a practice doing one 20 minute activity. I gave each player a puzzle piece and as I handed it to them, I gave them advice on how this game is more important than winning and how being a JH all american means nothing if we cannot commit to the four years of high school. Winning now is meaningless if we don't work to improve considering some of our opponents were terrible. In HS, they play multiple classes that will make them work.

I ended practice by walking out of the gym and left them with the puzzle. They taped it together and signed it. I made every practice have a theme for the rest of the season and we grew in many ways. We ended up winning the tournament, but I made them work on 1-2 things a game that kept games close even if we could have put up 60. Most parents hated it but after the season I had some good praise from them.

Not doable for every kid or program. But this group it happened to work.

Their JR year they struggled and were one game below .500. Senior year they went to a regional final and lost by 1. Six went on to play in college.

not my doing, but clearly winning was going to happen and I took the chance to teach them to develop. It was one of the most taxing seasons ever yet the most rewarding.
 
CedarBuck92 said:
Follow up question. Should middle school be about overall development or development centered around what the HS team does?

For example, should the middle school work on the zone if the HS only runs man?
Click to expand...
To this point, and one about consolidation that is on another forum, this can be challenging in districts with multiple HS where they mix kids from different MS (it does happen), or in places where the two different MS/HS feeders don't want to necessarily get along. I have seen that happen and then the emphasis becomes winning, and by HS both programs are weak.
 
MS should be about making as many kids as possible better and hopefully giving them an experience where they want to continue to play. This is the same for youth sports in my opinion. The more kids who can play and get better, the better the product given to the HS coaches. The places that only play "the best" from a young age up may have a lightening in the bottle year or 2, but those with a program delivering quality and numbers are successful for much more than that. You never know who will move, choose another HS, decide not to play, not grow, get hurt and so on and so on. Developing as many as possible counters this. Too many times youth/MS coaches want to pound their chest and not think about the program down the road. There are a lot of "great" coaches (at least they think they are) in youth and MS sports who don't develop many kids only to watch that group not win down the road or even deliver many numbers to the HS program.
 
CedarBuck92 said:
I think you need to bridge the gap between them. MS should be mostly about development but you need to be successful enough that the kids want to come out and play.
The way I think is most successful is to spend the majority of the season working on development but if you have some form of postseason tournament then you play to win.
Click to expand...
That success is driven by the high school varsity team, not the 7th grade team. Kids should see the success of the high school teams and want to be a part of the middle school teams, knowing it is the beginning steps to getting there. Want those kids to buy into that being their first steps? The high school staff needs to be an integral part of the middle school program. Even by just showing up occasionally makes a huge difference in the eyes of those kids.

Cast the widest net possible to try and get and keep as many kids in the program for as long as possible. The early bloomers that become stagnate will eventually weed themselves out, the late bloomers that might have been overlooked will still be around when they grow up, and the for sure studs from the beginning will stick around from the beginning because they trust the program.
 
Last edited:
Philly_Cat said:
That success is driven by the high school varsity team, not the 7th grade team. Kids should see the success of the high school teams and want to be a part of the middle school teams, knowing it is the beginning steps to getting there. Want those kids to buy into that being their first steps? The high school staff needs to be an integral part of the middle school program. Even by just showing up occasionally makes a huge difference in the eyes of those kids.

Cast the widest net possible to try and get and keep as many kids in the program for as long as possible. The early bloomers that become stagnate will eventually weed themselves out, the late bloomers that might have been overlooked will still be around when they grow up, and the for sure studs from the beginning will stick around from the beginning because they trust the program.
Click to expand...
Yes and no. Of course the kids see the varsity and are driven to join the team but if they aren't having fun or don't feel like they are given a chance to compete on the 7th grade team they don't want to join. Sports need to be fun for as long as possible to instill a love of the game, so that when the Varsity coach makes practices miserable and the game no longer fun the kids stick with it because they love the game.
 
CedarBuck92 said:
Yes and no. Of course the kids see the varsity and are driven to join the team but if they aren't having fun or don't feel like they are given a chance to compete on the 7th grade team they don't want to join. Sports need to be fun for as long as possible to instill a love of the game, so that when the Varsity coach makes practices miserable and the game no longer fun the kids stick with it because they love the game.
Click to expand...
Thus everything else I listed after that.
 
I have always thought you could have a combination of both but lean towards the development side. Ultimately, in the end winning a JH game is not important unless your kids are developing in doing so. With that said, if a JH team has a 12 man roster can the coach be focused on developing 8 of them while competing to win or is the program better if he focuses on developing all 12.
 
I think this all starts with leadership at the high school level -- AD and Coaches. If they create a culture where they are inclusive when kids are young and have a process where they all play and they all get better in youth and MS then they will ultimately be successful in HS which starts the cycle over again. I don't mean win the state every year because you need really good players to do that, but maybe a "down" year is .500 or close to it. That is how programs work. If a coach at the HS level says they are too busy to be part of the program or does not instruct the coaches in his/her middle school system to get all kids reasonable minutes then he will get what he gets at the varsity level -- probably fewer kids per grade, less depth and no real culture/program.
 
A good high school coach who wants to build a program that has success on a consistent level knows that he has to build it from the ground up. That means his elementary and middle school/junior high coaches need to be a part of his/her staff. They need to be on the same page and run the same system. At the elem and ms/jh level it is about developing as many kids as possible in their skill sets. Its also about getting as many numbers as possible involved in the program. It may take some time, but once the varsity coach gets their system in place, then they just reload every year and don't have to rebuild
 
You become a loser by losing. Really hard at the lower levels to teach and win at the same time. Its a rare middle school coach who can do it. As they wont stay a middle school coach long.

Then the dark vortex of having talent in middle school. Your winning with talent, but its 50/50 if that talent holds into HS.
 
It's funny that I agree with nearly every post even when some are arguing different sides haha. All raise good points!

I think alot of it depends on the size of the school. Big school? Try to establish a winning culture while running what the HS coach runs. You're big enough to retain talent and the better players will work to develop themselves anyway. Small school? Probably more development based. Can't afford to lose kids that early due to disinterest from not playing. Try to build a love for the game within them and then they'll want to stay in the sport and work hard.
 
I'm going to purposely ride the fence on this one because I don't know that there is a blanket answer. I think in any sport, competition makes you better and the "learning: to win is nearly as important as the winning itself. Now I'll also say the #1 job of the middle school coach and even JV coach is to develop first. Winning is important, but not the top thing. That said, as much frustration can happen when you have a good team, but the coach sacrifices winning for even or more equal playing time and you lose that competitiveness.

Now, the other issue is this, and I see this happen too. The kids that get the lion's share of the PT in middle school end up giving up the sport or moving in high school, and you're screwed because the others didn't develop correctly.

So...in the end...it depends. I do say that MOST people want to be involved in a winning program. I think coaches should do EVERYTHING in their power to get as many kids as much playing time as possible. BUT, I think also at the start of the season, it needs to be conveyed that Practice time IS Playing time. So many only feel that playing time is only on game night. That's not true.
 
14Red said:
I'm going to purposely ride the fence on this one because I don't know that there is a blanket answer. I think in any sport, competition makes you better and the "learning: to win is nearly as important as the winning itself. Now I'll also say the #1 job of the middle school coach and even JV coach is to develop first. Winning is important, but not the top thing. That said, as much frustration can happen when you have a good team, but the coach sacrifices winning for even or more equal playing time and you lose that competitiveness.

Now, the other issue is this, and I see this happen too. The kids that get the lion's share of the PT in middle school end up giving up the sport or moving in high school, and you're screwed because the others didn't develop correctly.

So...in the end...it depends. I do say that MOST people want to be involved in a winning program. I think coaches should do EVERYTHING in their power to get as many kids as much playing time as possible. BUT, I think also at the start of the season, it needs to be conveyed that Practice time IS Playing time. So many only feel that playing time is only on game night. That's not true.
Click to expand...
A lot of development happens in practice, but getting game time is important to kids. Also, these years might be the last that a kid plays for the school, so why not let them get into games if they're working hard? It is a complicated balance for sure.
 
Please see the sentence "I think coaches should do EVERYTHING in their power to get as many kids as much playing time as possible." Have to remember too that jr. high games are shorter than high school. 6 minute quarters in basketball fly by. Since were talking about development, I'd propose longer quarters in middle school, and even a 5th quarter for development.
Talk some sense said:
A lot of development happens in practice, but getting game time is important to kids. Also, these years might be the last that a kid plays for the school, so why not let them get into games if they're working hard? It is a complicated balance for sure.
Click to expand...
 
If you are developing at the Middle School/Jr. High level you are behind the 8-ball. With all of the teams and tournaments out there for kids in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grades...most schools/teams are developing at this level. By the time the kids get to Jr High it's about winning as most have been developed.
 
Fayette79 said:
If you are developing at the Middle School/Jr. High level you are behind the 8-ball. With all of the teams and tournaments out there for kids in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grades...most schools/teams are developing at this level. By the time the kids get to Jr High it's about winning as most have been developed.
Click to expand...
Maybe at some places. It would be sad if players are as fully developed as they're going to get by 6th grade. Now, I've seen some Baby Shaqs who dominated AAU when 11 years old who were the same size at 15. Playing earlier will develop a player, but just playing games at that age typically shows who is developed physically or has worked at a minimum level on skills.

But yes if a coach can get his program deeper than Middle School it will help - especially if the coach has a big emphasis on skill development.
 
I apologize for the long post, but hear me out.

As a former, long-time middle-school coach, outside of developing young men at a very impressionable age in their lives, my primary responsibilities were to (1) prepare them for playing the sport in high school by developing their skills and knowledge of the game, and (2) help them build upon their love for the game so they'll want to keep playing the sport in high school, and have fun doing it. Without both, the varsity program is not set up for success.

This is a double-edged sword, though. You want to keep as many kids as interested in the sport as possible, and the easiest way to do that is by giving them opportunities to play in games. But the second easiest way to maintain their interest is to win. Winning is fun for everyone, even those who didn't play as much. If playing time is distributed equally across the board, as previously mentioned, it leads to fewer wins, and thus less fun.

One thing to keep in mind is that it hurts the varsity program more if/when the better players are the ones losing interest in the game. If my best players are sitting the bench more than they should, and we are losing more games than we should, they know it, and they either lose interest in the game or begin to resent the coach(es) and/or the program as a whole. This is a difficult mentality to break, as the damage may already be done.

When your better players stop playing the sport (or in today's society, leave for another school), then the worse players automatically become your "better" players, and the baseline level of play drops. More losing follows. More kids lose interest. It's a snowball effect. The varsity program slowly crumbles. All because you wanted everybody to get equal playing time in middle school.

If our job as middle school coaches is to develop players, don't forget that is mostly done in practice (and at home). For the most part, you don't develop players during the game. The game is the reward. And players need to know that as you set expectations early in the season. But again, it's still fun to play, and some of those kids will lose interest. It's a tough predicament for coaches, but it's what you signed up for.

The best you can do is be honest with every kid up front - after you have evaluated their skill level - about potential playing time that year if they do not improve. Praise their strengths and ways they can contribute to the team, but encourage them and help them in their weaknesses.

You want to know the best case scenario? If you have enough kids and coaches for multiple teams, split them up into multiple teams! And do not split them up evenly. Middle schoolers should be mature enough to handle news that they are, at that moment, not as good as some other players. In fact, I can assure you 99% of them already know it; it's their parents who don't want to accept it. Even so, we want them to keep playing and keep developing, because A LOT can happen between middle school and high school.

That is my position on the matter. Good luck! It's not easy.
 
Last edited:
thePITman said:
I apologize for the long post, but hear me out.

As a former, long-time middle-school coach, outside of developing young men at a very impressionable age in their lives, my primary responsibilities were to (1) prepare them for playing the sport in high school by developing their skills and knowledge of the game, and (2) help them build upon their love for the game so they'll want to keep playing the sport in high school, and have fun doing it. Without both, the varsity program is not set up for success.

This is a double-edged sword, though. You want to keep as many kids as interested in the sport as possible, and the easiest way to do that is by giving them opportunities to play in games. But the second easiest way to maintain their interest is to win. Winning is fun for everyone, even those who didn't play as much. If playing time is distributed equally across the board, as previously mentioned, it leads to fewer wins, and thus less fun.

One thing to keep in mind is that it hurts the varsity program more if/when the better players are the ones losing interest in the game. If my best players are sitting the bench more than they should, and we are losing more games than we should, they know it, and they either lose interest in the game or begin to resent the coach(es) and/or the program as a whole. This is a difficult mentality to break, as the damage may already be done.

When your better players stop playing the sport (or in today's society, leave for another school), then the worse players automatically become your "better" players, and the baseline level of play drops. More losing follows. More kids lose interest. It's a snowball effect. The varsity program slowly crumbles. All because you wanted everybody to get equal playing time in middle school.

If our job as middle school coaches is to develop players, don't forget that is mostly done in practice (and at home). For the most part, you don't develop players during the game. The game is the reward. And players need to know that as you set expectations early in the season. But again, it's still fun to play, and some of those kids will lose interest. It's a tough predicament for coaches, but it's what you signed up for.

The best you can do is be honest with every kid up front - after you have evaluated their skill level - about potential playing time that year if they do not improve. Praise their strengths and ways they can contribute to the team, but encourage them and help them in their weaknesses.

You want to know the best case scenario? If you have enough kids and coaches for multiple teams, split them up into multiple teams! And do not split them up evenly. Middle schoolers should be mature enough to handle news that they are, at that moment, not as good as some other players. In fact, I can assure you 99% of them already know it; it's their parents who don't want to accept it. Even so, we want them to keep playing and keep developing, because A LOT can happen between middle school and high school.

That is my position on the matter. Good luck! It's not easy.
Click to expand...

Bingo
 
I will say it depends entirely on what your Varsity HC's vision for the middle school program is. Some varsity coaches don't want anything to do with em until they actually enroll at the high school. Some varsity coaches will attend middle school games. Some will invite the MS coach(es) to the high school to watch practice, sit in on meetings, etc....

I say eliminate MS sports entirely. Why not just intramural it at that stage?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top