Player evaluations
Over the past 11 years, I met with players routinely and provided some feedback to them a few different
ways. Here’s what I did…
--A few days into tryouts before our final roster decisions were made, I’d meet with each player;
I would try to have at least one other coach in the room with me at the time.
--After the season was over, I’d meet with each player one on one
--At the end of summer basketball, I’d send each player a note with some thoughts about their
play during summer basketball.
I think coaches need to come up with their own system, and the nature/tone for each discussion is
different based on a host of factors. The reason I liked to evaluate them this way was that there was
always a reference point. I could say in the post-summer letter, “We talked about your shooting form in
our post season evaluation, and ….” Or, “In my letter to you this summer, I mentioned that your
leadership skills were starting to emerge…” In other words, nearly every comment in these
conversations had context. The meetings were all connected.
I don’t have to tell you this, but there’s a lot of reasons to meet with players periodically—holding them
accountable to standards, providing them with feedback to get better, picking their brain for ideas,
getting a feel for the pulse of the team, covering yourself (“Timmy, we talked about your role in
preseason. We agreed that if you wanted more minutes, you’d need to do x, y, z. You haven’t done
that. That’s why you’re not playing.”), etc. here’s my sappy side showing through: the greatest benefit
of these meetings was that my relationships with my players were better because of them.
Here some thoughts on pre- and post-season meetings……take what helps, toss what doesn’t
Pre-season player meetings
Kinds of questions/topics, etc that will work with most kids:
Your view and their view on…
Their role this season on offense, defense, overall
Their role as a leader
Their strengths as a player
Their weaknesses
Their goals for the season, individually and as a team
Long term goals—captain? Starter? Play in college?
Where they’ve improved the most over the time you’ve worked with them
Typically, if we knew that we could not keep a player, we’d tell him during this meeting. It’s the most
difficult thing to do as a coach. It’s awful. We’re not cutting kids here, so there’s no point in talking
about some of the ways to handle this conversation. However, you will be meeting with kids who are
not very good and who will struggle to get time. I think we owe it to them to be honest. There is
nothing wrong with saying this after the first handful of practices…
Timmy, I love your effort and attitude, and I think you have a really good understanding of the
game. However, I’m going to be completely honest here. The other guards that you’re
competing against right now are more complete players than you are. They’re more versatile on
defense, and they’re more skilled on offense. If you played on this team, I don’t think you’d get
many minutes at all. I think there might be stretches where you didn’t play in several games in a
row. Given our limited practice space, time, and number of coaches, you will not get nearly as
much scrimmage time as your teammates in practice. Your role could change; this is not written
in stone. But right now, this is how I see it. You need to think very hard about whether you’d
like to play this year. I don’t want you frustrated at mid-season because you’re not playing.
It’s a difficult conversation, but it’s honest. By the way, it’s always good to have another coach there (or
me) for these types of conversations. Some parents (and/or kids) may see this as a way around the nocut rule; I see this as a way of setting up realistic expectations for a everyone. If Timmy is all about
playing time, and there won’t be much playing time for Timmy, Timmy would be better off not playing.
Have any of you coached a kid on your team who’s miserable b/c he’s not playing as much as he thinks
he should be? Not good.
Post-season meetings
I’ve done these several different ways. For a few years, I made a list of every aspect of our program
(summer ball, uniforms, player meetings, practice format, game adjustments, pregame routine, etc) and
gave it to players and asked them to have something to say about a handful of things on the list. Most
years, I just told them to come to the meeting with at least 2 positive comments and 2 suggestions for
improvement about our program. Every year I told them to come to the meeting prepared to talk about
their season as an individual player.
I’d ask them to open the meeting by assessing their season. Were they pleased with how they did? In
what ways did they improve this year? Are there any areas of their game the think they can improve in?
We’d then talk about the team performance. Did we do better or worse than they thought we would?
What did this team do well; what did we do poorly? What can we do to get better as a team in the
future?
We’d then talk about the nuts and bolts of the program. I’d tell them that every year in the offseason
I’d evaluate how the previous season went, and I wanted their input. What drills work in practice?
What drills don’t? What did we spend too much time on? What didn’t we spend enough time on? Are
there policies that don’t work? Everything is fair game: the design of the team shirt that I had them
wear during warm-ups, the Christmas tournaments we took them too, etc. Everything.
Finally, we’d talk about the future. Do they want to play again? What are they going to do to get
better? What role do they envision for themselves next year? etc
Senior meetings were the best. Especially if it’s a kid you’ve coached for a while. They’ll be incredibly
honest with you about what works and what doesn’t. They have no fear of you cutting their playing
time if they tell you something you don’t want to hear. You’ll find that most of them will want to stay
and talk to you. At Walker, this senior meeting officially ended their season. For many of the kids, it
officially ended their high school athletic career. It was a big deal. My best player last year had played
varsity all 4 years. He kept moving the date of his meeting and would tell me it was because of conflicts
with track. When we finally sat down to talk about his year and his career, he admitted that the reason
he kept delaying the meeting was that he just wasn’t ready. Turning in the uniform and sitting down to
talk with me about his season signaled to him that his basketball career was over, and he didn’t want it
to be.
Some of these meetings will be really short (5 minutes), so even if you have a roster of 20 + kids, it won’t
be a burden to get through them. I had 12 varsity and 12 jv kids each year that I met with after the
season. I’d schedule one in the morning, maybe one at break, and one after school. Within 2 ½ weeks I
had met with everyone.