Dos & Don’ts When Choosing a College for Basketball

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choosing college for basketball

As summer comes to a close, the time for high school basketball players to think more seriously about where they want to go to college is fast approaching.

Maybe some new schools have reached out to you about playing for them. Maybe you’ve learned that you will play DII or DIII instead of DI. Or maybe all you know is that you want to play college basketball. 

Every year, we see PSB players and their parents dive into the process of making a college choice. It’s not easy and not a decision that should be taken lightly. After all, this will hopefully be the next four years of your life as well as your network of friends, alumni and professionals.

Below is our list of Dos and Don’ts when deciding on where to play college basketball.

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TOP 5 REASONS WHY KIDS SHOULD WEAR A MOUTH GUARD

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kids wear mouth guards basketball

What is a Mouthguard?

A Mouthguard is a dental appliance that acts like a cushion made of high-grade dental plastic material that protects the teeth, mouth and jaw. A protective mouthguard should be comfortable, resilient, tear-resistant, durable and easy to clean.  

It should not restrict speech or breathing and should fit properly.  In basketball, communication plays an important role to effectively exhibit teamwork and win games.  

Players communicate when they need to pass the ball, assist a co-player, yell when he or she is open, or thank a team mate for a good play.  Hence, a mouthguard should be a perfect fit for it not to be a hindrance for good team play and communication.

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5 QUESTIONS WITH NBA GUARD MALIK MONK

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In June, we hosted the first session of the Malik Monk Basketball Camp in Charlotte, North Carolina. The second session will take place August 6-9 in Huntersville, NC and there is still room to sign up!

The Malik Monk Basketball Camp is a week-long summer camp powered by us, Pro Skills Basketball, a Jr. NBA Flagship Organization.

This camp is a special way for Malik to give back to the game while providing a fun opportunity for young boys and girls ages 6-17 to learn the game.

The camp includes appearances by Malik, a personal picture, and autograph for each camper as well as a ton of fun drills, competitions, and games.

During the first day of camp, all of the different age groups took part in the “Meet & Greet and Q&A” station where the campers all got to personally meet Malik as well as ask him any questions they wanted.

The video above highlights some of the questions and answers, and they’re also transcribed below!

Here are 5 questions that we had the opportunity to ask Malik Monk.

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YOUTH BASKETBALL ORGANIZATION BEST PRACTICES: PART 2

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In part 1 of my blog on youth basketball organization best practices, I covered general organizational best practices that we at PSB have developed ourselves or borrowed/learned from others and now implement.

As stated in the first post, these are not really on-court basketball guidelines, but rather, the off-court, business and organizational ideas, policies, and procedures. If you’re looking for on-court and more basketball specific guidelines, you should check out the USA Basketball Youth and Jr. NBA guidelines here.

I wanted to share these organizational best practices because we feel that that is a productive way to positively influence youth basketball, which is our vision at Pro Skills.

We believe in sharing as much information as possible, which you can see in all of our free content, and we hope it contributes to the betterment of youth basketball around the world.

I also want to re-emphasize that we are by no means perfect. From myself to our directors to our coaches, players, and parents, none of us are perfect, but these best practices help us to mitigate much of that imperfection.

Moving along,  I want to continue along our path of sharing youth basketball organization best practices, but move away from the general practices to get a bit more specific in regards to parents, coaches, and players.

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YOUTH BASKETBALL ORGANIZATION BEST PRACTICES

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Youth Basketball Organization Best Practices

 

Part 1: Best Practices for Running a Successful Youth Basketball Program

I listen to a lot of podcasts. Podcasts on basketball, business, leadership, random stories, and more. About a year ago, I was listening to one of my favorite business podcasts called Startup by Gimlet Media.

In particular, I was listening to Season 2 that was following around 2 young ladies who founded “Dating Ring”, an online dating service.

I can’t remember the exact episode, but at one point in the show, one of the co-founders said something to the effect of online dating as a business being inherently difficult from a customer satisfaction standpoint because dating is, simply put, imperfect and a hard thing.

Very few dates and/or potential partners are a perfect experience. Some dates or partners are good while many are not, but you naturally have to take the good with the bad in order to end up with the person you want to ultimately be with.

This is just how dating works for the majority of people. It just so happens that, often times, customers of dating services don’t quite understand this fact and blame the service for a bad date.

You’re probably wondering at this point what the heck online dating companies have to do with youth basketball?

best practices for coaching youth basketballWell, it struck me then, as I listened to that podcast, that this scenario was very similar to the landscape of competitive youth basketball, and competitive youth sports in general.

Competitive basketball is inherently a really difficult business to be in, especially from a customer service perspective.

It is an imperfect business. It’s not like we’re manufacturing a single product that is expected to be the same thing every single time, like an iPhone.

We’re dealing with kids and parents and coaching, and we all know coaching is an imperfect art-form.

On top of that, mix in the competition piece, and it gets even harder!

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