Coaching 101- Stick With FS Prelims or Swith to JV Prelims

There are fewer students choosing to play both boys and girls basketball in Illinois and also nationally. Traditionally most schools have offered three levels of competition- freshman, frosh-soph, and varsity. As the number of players has decreased, in order to maintain three levels of play, schools are often having freshman players play multiple levels. A freshman may play two freshman games and two frosh-soph games per week. In the meantime, juniors are caught in a situation where they are on the bench for the varsity and not playing any games. 

Schools are looking at ways to handle this decrease in participation in HS basketball, especially in girls basketball. I did an informal survey of 12 athletic conferences to see what someone of them were doing to accommodate the decrease in numbers. It appears that one of the common threads is for more and more conferences to play JV and Varsity level competition instead of the more traditional FS and Varsity levels. 

In girls basketball, 7 conferences are now allowing schools to play freshmen, sophomores, or juniors in the prelim games- so it is a JV contest. Five of the conferences are still playing a FS game for the prelim game in girls basketball. In boys basketball, because of larger numbers, only 3 of the conferences are playing JV prelim games.

When I first started coaching girls basketball in the 1970’s, all schools seemed to play JV prelim games instead of FS games. In the early 1970’s, it appeared that girls basketball was still enough in its infancy that they were not getting consistent numbers out for the Soph team, thus JV made sense. But by the end of the ‘70’s, I moved to make our prelim game a FS game because I wanted to “protect” the sophomores from getting beat out by juniors. Going with FS level made sense to allow more freshmen and sophomore a chance to play. 

So 5-6 years ago when I first heard schools were opting to go with a JV prelim, not a FS prelim, I immediately thought it was a bad idea. It was an idea that would squeeze sophomores out. 

As it has since been explained to me, it makes total sense. Right now in girls basketball, it is typical for a lot of programs to maybe have 10 freshmen, 8 sophomores, 6 juniors and 4 seniors- so perhaps a total of 28 players. 

To make three teams of Freshmen, Frosh-Soph, and Varsity work, things can be really stretched. Often it means having low numbers on some levels for games and/or practices. For example with the Varsity, FS, and Frosh model, the varsity has 10 for practice, freshmen are moved up to soph to give them 10, and then the freshmen are stuck with only 8. All of these numbers make for a bad practice situation. 

With a new model of Frosh-Soph, JV, and Varsity, it can be much different looking. With JV prelim on Varsity game night, the varsity can have the top 14-16 players in the program practice with the varsity. This makes for a great practice situation. Then on game night, the JV game can be played by the bottom 8-10 varsity players, who normally are not going to get lots of Varsity minutes. So at each night in practice, all the best players are working against each other, and on game nights, the best 14-16 kids are all going to get minutes. So you don’t have juniors who sometimes go an entire season without playing hardly at all.

So that leaves somewhere between 12-14 Frosh-Soph players to practice together and play on an off-night from the Varsity. With 12-14 players vs only 8-10 players, these players will grow more thru having better practices. And on game nights, play an A game and play a B game (even if only 1 half), so all of the players get minutes. 

The huge upside to the JV concept is getting the best players (including freshmen and sophomores) practicing together. These better and more challenging practices will allow for greater growth. The potential downside is if the coaches of the FS level team don’t recognize that a FS level should be more about development and less about winning- so the coaches really work to make sure that Freshmen get the attention they should get. 

The JV concept may need to be tweeked if a school has bigger numbers, maybe even going back to the FS prelim concept. The point is that schools must recognize that if numbers change, you can’t keep doing something just because that is how you have always done things.