Show notes
- TeachHoops.com
- NukeHydration.com: Clean sports drink started by a sports mom and dad out of Mississippi. Coach Bill is drinking the Lime Time. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off your first order.
- CoachingYouthHoops.com: Build a custom practice plan for your team or print and go with one of the ready made practices. No more ChatGPT practice plans.
How Do You Cut a Kid Without Killing Their Love for the Game?
- Are You Sure the Kid Heard What You Actually Said?
- Who Should Be in the Room When You Cut a Sixth Grader?
- What Do You Say When a Kid Asks “Who Else Got Cut?”
- Are You Cutting Them, or Putting Them in the Right Heat?
- Why Does Every Cut Conversation Turn Into a Game of Telephone?
The right room, the right words, and the right heat.
After a quick check on the weather (California gets a little bit of fall, and its winter is mostly rain), Coach Bill and Coach Collins get into the follow up to tryouts: the conversations nobody wants to have. Cutting a kid, or moving a player down from the top team to a lower level. The goal is not just delivering the news. It is delivering it without killing the kid’s enthusiasm for the sport.
Coach Bill always has these conversations in person, and his rule of thumb depends on the age of the player:
- Eighth grade: parent and kid together.
- Seventh grade: depends on the situation.
- Sixth grade and below: usually just the parent, at least at first.
But he always makes the same offer. “I’m happy to sit with both of you, and I’m happy to talk to them specifically about the things they need to work on.” He encourages families to take him up on it.
His reasoning is the heart of the episode. You can say the exact same words to two different kids. One hears a challenge: this wasn’t my year, but next year look out. The other hears that the coach doesn’t like them, they’re horrible, and they’re quitting. Same conversation, same words, completely different landing. You have to know the kid, and you have to know the parent.
Coach Collins tells a story that proves the point. After his son Drew’s sophomore year, he sat down with him for a long and fairly blunt conversation about what his role would look like as a junior. Several assistant coaches were in the room, including Coach Kevin Klagos.
By the time Coach Collins got home, Drew’s mother was waiting at the door ready to give him an earful about why he told Drew he would never play for him.
That was not remotely what was said. He had to call time out, walk her back through the actual conversation, and offer to get Coach Klagos on the phone because he heard every word. What Coach Collins said was: here is where you fit and here is what you need to work on. What Drew heard, and what Drew carried home, was: I’m no good and I won’t play next year.
His message to every coach listening: what you say to a kid is not what reaches the parent. Ever. It is a game of telephone. That is exactly why, at the grade school level, you need to be talking directly to the parents.
And one more rule from Coach Collins: do not post it, do not put it online. Talk to people.
Coach Bill pushes for the actual language. What do you say to a sixth grader, or their parent, when what you really mean is “not good enough”?
Coach Collins admits that in a roundabout way, that is what you are saying. But here is how he structures it:
- Start positive. Here is what your kid is really good at.
- Name the gaps plainly. Here are the weak spots and the skills they need to get better at.
- Reframe the comparison. It is not that your son or daughter got worse. Some other kids got better and worked on these things, so we are moving them up.
- Give them the runway. You have the next 364 days. Here is exactly what to work on.
- Land on the upside. This is a better fit for the level and for the teams they will play. More playing time, more reps, more chances to build the skills they could not get otherwise.
Always bring it back to a positive at the end.
Coach Collins’ best analogy comes straight out of Madison, Wisconsin, which runs the biggest outdoor swim meet in the country every summer, with roughly twenty public pools feeding into an event called All City.
When the seven year olds swim the 25 freestyle, there are something like thirty five heats of it. The beauty of the meet is that every kid is placed in the heat that matches their time. Eight swimmers per heat, and if you win yours you get a ribbon. The top eight kids in the city are in the top heat. Everybody else is racing kids they can actually race.
Those kids leave the pool smiling. They competed. Nobody got lapped.
Basketball cannot sort kids that cleanly, and both coaches acknowledge it. But that is what most coaches are trying to do, especially in programs with multiple teams. Not rank kids. Put them in the right heat.
“Who else got cut?” Or “How many?” Or “Who did you keep?”
Coach Bill admits this is the one he struggles with. Nobody wants to be the only one, because that is embarrassing. And when a kid truly is the only cut, the natural follow up is: why cut just one kid?
Coach Collins’ half joking answer: I can only keep ten. Well, keep eleven. I only have ten jerseys.
The real answer, as Coach Bill puts it, is that the gap between number ten and number eleven is usually huge. It is about level, not the number.
He also raises a safety question that does not get talked about enough. Is it actually safe for this kid to be on this court the way they are right now? Coach Collins adds the other half: and would they even be happy there?
Coach Collins’ youth program has had sixteen kids show up for fifth grade. You cannot carry sixteen on a team, so either you are cutting four to six kids, or you are telling families to go find four more players and another coach. Nobody wants to do either. (Coach Bill’s response: “You’re destroying the dreams of fifth graders? Way to go, Coach.”)
Sometimes twenty kids show up and only one parent volunteers to coach. Then somebody has to step up, or the program has one team whether it wants to or not.
And for the parent who says they have never coached before? Coach Bill’s answer: don’t worry about it. Go to coachingyouthhoops.com, download the plans, and follow the instructions step by step.
On the club side, Coach Bill tries to make sure a cut is never a dead end. Didn’t make the first team? Come to our camps and pick up skills there. Play in our three on three. Keep developing. And plenty of city and church leagues run equal playing time, where every kid plays, which is its own valid path.
Pick the room based on the kid’s age. Start positive, be specific about the gaps, give them a 364 day plan, and end on why this level is a better fit. Assume the message will get scrambled on the way home, so get the parent in the conversation. Never post it online. And keep a door open somewhere so the cut is never the end of the sport.
Learn more and get everything you need for your season at TeachHoops.com
TitleAlternate titlesSubtitleShow NotesWho is in the roomThe Drew storyThe script for delivering a cutPut them in the right heatThe question every cut kid asksWhen cutting is a math problemFind a pathway for everybodyCoach’s takeaway
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