Texas Association of Basketball Coaches conducts annual clinic virtually this year
The Texas Association of Baskeball Coaches (TABC) has been putting together their yearly coaching clinic through virtual meetings and lectures with some of the top minds in basketball from throughout the country during this past week.
Some of the meetings are focused on offense and some are focused on defense. There have been coaches such as Baylor’s associate head coach Jerome Tang who even focus on other things that matter on the court such as body language and communication with your players.
Alabama-huntsville coach John Shulman spoke about how no matter what level of coaching you are at, it is important to the players on your team that you put just as much, if not more, effort into the game of basketball than they do.
“Levels of coaching do not matter,” Shulman said during his video conference. “If you use the words ‘I’m just a...’ to describe your current coaching job, shame on you! Your job is important to your kids!”
Some other star speakers included 2018 WNBA Coach of the Year Nicki Collen as well as ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla. Each one of those coaches spoke about important concepts and one of them caught the eye of a local coach from Howard County.
“(Fraschilla) talked about pick-and-rolls and different ways to run independent and that was probably one of my favorite ones,” Forsan coach Cory Richardson said.
The purpose of these meetings is to coach up the coaches from around Texas and assist them in finding new ways to improve their own squads. With high school coaches having rosters that are everchanging, these virtual clinics are very useful in helping coaches adapt, and possibly even switch, to new systems that may be more effective with the players they have at their disposal.
The annual TABC clinic has never had a more impressive bunch of guest speakers and prep coaches around the state are taking notes and preparing themselves for additions they will be making to their practice and game plans this winter.
“A lot of them gave drills and things that they do to reinforce the stuff that they’re teaching and we’ll basically try to do the same thing,” Richardson said. “Just some different drills and techniques of teaching the same old thing. Basketball has changed but it’s still the basic stuff so you still have to teach them how to block-out, rebound and shoot. I found several drills that will help mix it up and keep all the guys interested.”
Even though the TABC Clinic had to be done online this year, there was still plenty of knowledge to be gained. Some coaches even considered the virtual meetings to be more beneficial than the inperson ones. With the meetings online, any coach can log-in online and pull up any of the coaching sessions, at anytime, to go back and study.
While COVID-19 still has ahold of the athletic community throughout Texas, the TABC has excelled at putting together their yearly clinic.
“They’ve had more speakers than they usually have and some high-quality college coaches,” Richardson said. “This year has been different but it’s been pretty cool.”
It is important to remember that players are not the only ones who can learn new things, coaches can too.
Shawn Moran is the sportswriter at the Big Spring Herald. To contact him, e-mail sports@bigspringherald.com or call 432-263-7331.