High School Season for U15-18 Cobras
For every SSB coach coming from BC, high school basketball played an important part in our lives and development as players. For many of us, it was the primary place to learn, compete and develop into players ready to play post secondary basketball.
Lots has changed over the last 20 years with the explosion of club basketball in our province…and these changes have certainly had an impact on high school basketball. However, unlike several other Canadian provinces, high school basketball is still an important part of the year and something every BC high school student can get excited about. SSB supports and values helping players have good school basketball seasons.
Luka Lizdek playing for the Kitsilano Blue Demons
At SSB, our U15-18 (grade 9-12) Year Round Cobra teams are formed in September and will stay together until August. This means that most of our Cobra players will have 3+ months of time when they are on both their high school and Cobra teams. This article is to help players and their families know how to handle things if conflict arises and how to get the most out of their experience with SSB over the next few months.
Eric D’Andrea playing for LV Rogers
PURPOSE
An important place to start our discussion is by explaining WHY Split Second operates year round teams. We believe in developing players to be the best version of themselves and not simply trying to compete by going out and recruiting the strongest players from other clubs.
It takes time to develop strong players… and good teamwork between players. It takes time to develop real defensive and communication habits. It takes time to learn to play with each other and execute more sophisticated offensive systems. Keeping a group together, with the same coaches, systems, habits etc is a necessary step to achieving our goals.
LEARNING NEVER STOPS
As passionate coaches, there is so much we feel we need to teach players who want to compete at the next level that we can’t stop working our athletes for long periods of time over the winter and summer break. SSB has a staff of full time coaches so that we can be there for our athletes all year round.
While our 2-3 team sessions a week will continue throughout the winter, we know that these will be hard for many players to attend on a regular basis. We won’t have any Cobra games before April and there is NO expectation for players to come to these sessions before their high school season has completely wrapped up. We are here for you all season long, but we know your priority will likely be school basketball until Spring Break.
For those who can make it, our sessions will be very much focused on Skill Development (including getting up lots of shots) and Decision Making. We will make sure that SSB sessions have less wear-and-tear on the body and as few opportunities for injury as possible. These will be great tune-up sessions to help players perform better for their schools.
MORNING PLAYER DEVELOPMENT
Most of you know how much SSB has put into our Player Development sessions. Under the guidance of Hidde Vos (and additional help from Renda Imer on the girls side), plus the involvement of more than a dozen strong SSB coaches, we have run hundreds of sessions for our high school players in the last year, many of these on weekday mornings at VTT. We provide all this extra training for Cobras at no additional charge because we it’s the right thing to do for our players.
These morning sessions, which will continue throughout the winter, are invaluable time for serious players to improve, even during a busy high school season. If you’re already in regular communication with Hidde and Renda about these sessions, great. If you haven’t been coming out and want to, please touch base with them.
RECOVERY
In order to ask more from our bodies and grow stronger instead of breaking down over time, we need to do more to ensure proper recovery. During intense exercise, our bodies burn nutrients from our cells and turn them into waste products. We need to deal with both of these things.
A good healthy snack or meal and a low sugar electrolyte rich sport drink immediately after practice is a good way to replenish lost nutrients in the muscles.
Using various Active Recovery techniques to flush out the waste products from our legs can help reduce injuries and make us much more capable of playing hard day after day. Rather than just sitting on the couch after practice, try some of the following techniques to help keep you fresh and capable of getting more Player Development training done during the school season:
Massage or massage gun
Light exercise bike or pool running (keeping Heart Rate below 140 BPM) after practice/games
Normatec compression sleeves
Foam roller, rolling stick, lacrosse ball
Contrast baths- hot/cold therapy
If you’re tired or too sore to think of doing a hard workout, do NOT hesitate to come to an SSB training session and tell your coach what’s going on. We can help you work on some of the above active recovery ideas at the gym. Sometimes this is easier to motivate yourself than being alone at home.
The last pillar of recovery is getting enough sleep. While this isn’t easy with all the demands on students’ time, creating good habits around bed including shutting off electronics and getting into bed early are a great start. Good quality sleep can make a big difference for sustained athletic performance.
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT
Your SSB caoches are here for you…even when you can’t be in the gym. Please feel free to reach out to us.
Just like you, we were all players too. We’ve been through the ups and downs, the struggles and the triumphs that go along with competitive sport. Whether it sending us video of some of your school games to look at, coming to watch you live (when possible), or providing some words of encouragement and advice, we want to help you.
For any of you older players wanting some help with post secondary advice, we can help with this too.
HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?
Are you still wondering if you’re doing too much? With proper rest, recovery and replenishment, odds are that you can still get in a fair amount of training with SSB during the Winter season and become a stronger player.
Serious 15-18 year old players in most parts of the world play/train more basketball than your average BC high school team. Click here to read coach Raoul Korner’s thoughts on the difference between the European and North American system and how much players should be training each week.