Coaching 101- Daily Dozen

Years and years ago, I attended a clinic where Sam Alford (Steve Alford’s father) of New Castle, Ind gave a talk on developing a program. One of the concepts he talked about was giving his JH coaches a set of 5 drills to do each day in practice. The idea was that the first 30-45 minutes of each JH practice “belonged” to him as the Varsity coach. 

I thought it seemed like a great concept. The person who we hired to coach any of our lower level programs (JH thru FS), they were often inexperienced in coaching and often limited in their basketball knowledge. 

One year, we hired a JH social studies teacher, who had never played basketball and never coached any sport. He was an exceptional social studies teacher. He was someone determined to become a quality to coach- not so much concerned with wins/losses but concerned about giving the 7th grade girls a positive sports experience and helping them develop skills. To accomplish those goals, he needed some guidance. 

Alford’s concepts of daily drills seemed a perfect way to help my new coach. I chose to give the new coach what I called, “The Daily Dozen.” It was a set of 12 fundamental skills focusing on finishing, shooting, ball handling, fast break, and defense. I used some of the varsity players to go down and demonstrate each of these drills. He learned how to the drill, what to watch for in each drill, and how to help the players perfect these basic drills. 

Some of the drills were done everyday but there was enough variety to prevent boredom. Initially it took the new coach about an hour to go thru the drills. As time went on, it took him between 30-40 minutes. The new coach gave me positive feedback about how the Daily Dozen had worked for him. 

After that, I implemented the “Daily Dozen” with all levels of our program. It accomplished many positives:

1- Each day on each level players were working on important fundamental skills.

2- All levels of the program had a set of core drills that allowed an easy transition from year to year for players.

3- It was a fantastic way to bring a new coach into the program and give them some direction and some support.

4- It was an effective way for me as a varsity coach to send a message to all the coaches on all the levels that we needed to be a “team” as coaches. We were a program. So the Daily Dozen set a tone for what our program’s coaching culture was to be.