THE APPLICATION OF THE DRILLS

The teaching of the many phases of basketball fundamentals

involve a number of complications that are perplexing to the.

coach. The problem of interest of the players is one of the major
ones. Every coach is confronted with the player who tires of
fundamental drill and goes through the set-ups with an auto-
matic action that is less than half-hearted and produces no ap-
preciable improvement in the individual. Perhaps the player or
players will work earnestly for a week or more but the cry for
scrimmage is soon sounded. We know from our teaching experi-
ence that, we must have the interest of the individual if we are
to progress in our teaching. Our teaching of fundamentals is
mostly a matter of habit drill; instruction is given and practice
is conducted until the action becomes one of habit. Yet we do
not take into consideration that we fail to approach the condi-
tion. which we are planning for in our drills. Lack of variation
in teaching a fundamental, no competitive element in our drills,
and antiquated set-ups that fail to teach what we expect them
to teach are a part of our training. This is the situation the
author faced when starting this study. The knowledge of a
number of drills for teaching the same fundamental and careful
planning of the practice session by rotating the drills increase
the interest of the players with a corresponding increase in skill.

In the compilation of these drills no consideration has been
given to instructions in the proper methods of executing the fun-
damentals of basketball. There are many texts on basketball
available at the present time that cover all of the phases of
basketball fundamentals clearly and completely. It is useless to
use drills of any type unless the coach has a thorough under-
standing of fundamentals. Numerous suggestions of points to be
given special emphasis are given in some of the drills. The au-
thor has found these worthy of that stress in administering
these drills to his own squads. Championship teams have been
and will always be teams that have mastered the fundamentals
of basketball and enjoy the game.

Numerous drills can be constructed by the individual coach
to teach phases of the offensive system being taught by him and

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