Blog

Elevate Your Game

Reason #1 — Shooting Percentage

by Shawn Jones on Mar 13, 2025

Let’s be honest—did your team finish where you wanted this year? Unless you won the last game of the tournament in your state, the answer is NO—you did not finish where you wanted. You may have been satisfied with your team’s finish based on talent,…

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Bouncing Back: Managing Emotions After a Tough Loss

by Shawn Jones on Mar 10, 2025

My mentor coach once gave me the best advice about coaching, and I have never forgotten it: “You are never as good as they say when you win, and you are never as bad as they say when you lose.” You can’t stop people from…

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Dealing with the Outside Noise: A Coach’s Guide

by Shawn Jones on Mar 5, 2025

Coaching is a unique profession in that we face many internal pressures, such as keeping our team academically eligible, maintaining players’ physical health, ensuring mental focus, and, ultimately, winning games. I’ve always said that no one can put more pressure on a coach to win…

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When Players Question Coaching Decisions: Turning Tension into Team Building

by Shawn Jones on Feb 24, 2025

At some point in your coaching career, you are going to have athletes question, and even disagree with, your decisions. That’s okay—you just have to navigate it properly so that it doesn’t happen often and doesn’t have negative effects. Believe it or not, it is…

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Winning Without Your Star: How to Handle Key Player Injuries

by Shawn Jones on Feb 19, 2025

How does a coach handle a key player injury, especially at a critical point in the season? The correct answer to this question has two parts, and they are likely executed 3-4 months apart from each other. In order to effectively manage a key injury…

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Motivating Techniques for Players in a Slump

by Shawn Jones on Feb 11, 2025

All players, at some point or another, go through a slump. They experience a mental block in confidence that affects their performance in both practice and games. So, how does a coach help a player work through a slump? The most important thing to remember…

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Dealing With Mental and Physical Fatigue During the Season

by Shawn Jones on Feb 3, 2025

Every team faces fatigue. Some may be able to press the whole game and wear others out, but somewhere down the road, even those teams begin to feel the effects on their legs and bodies. The dilemma coaches always face is how much conditioning to…

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Turning Difficult Athletes into Champions

by Shawn Jones on Jan 28, 2025

If you coach for longer than two weeks, you will encounter a kid who is “difficult.” He might not be difficult to others; he saves it all for you. Other times, every teacher in the school struggles with a student all day, and you get…

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Navigating the Parent-Coach Relationship

by Shawn Jones on Jan 21, 2025

One of the things a coach is never fully prepared for is dealing with parents. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as an indifferent parent. When it comes to our children, we can quickly lose perspective. Every parent wants to see their child…

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Dealing With a Losing Streak

by Shawn Jones on Jan 13, 2025

Coach long enough, and odds are you will encounter a losing streak. How do effective coaches navigate periods of losing games without ultimately suffering the biggest loss of all—losing the team? Unless your school reloads with unbelievable talent every year, there is a high chance…

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