Tuesday, February 28, 2006
How I "teach" field sense
I was pretty intrigued when I read Idris saying that he doesn’t like to answer “what if” questions. The idea was that you want people developing instincts, field sense, whatever you want to call it – and giving people too much of a script to follow gets in the way of that.
Jim touched on this topic, but his “applications” don’t definitely support either the “principles” camp or the “scripted” camp.
I find this interesting because, for the most part, I am firmly in the "scripted" or, perhaps better, the "specifics" camp. I think that in the short term, you help players be effective by giving them simple rules on the field. Only as a player develops and becomes comfortable playing some role will they develop real “field sense”. The obvious question is, does giving a newer player specific rules on what to do on the field impede their learning more nuanced rules? My opinion is not only no, but utter diametric disagreement – by giving them rules, you give them a framework upon which to hang exceptions and additions, until their internal, instinctive “playbook” develops into a fully nuanced field sense. By giving rules, I am building a young player’s field sense from the ground up.
As I said before on the coaching blog, the Purdue Women’s offense last year had a rather rigid structure. In particular, it was possible for a cutter to be effective by following extremely simple rules – when the handlers do A, I do B; when the handlers do X, I do Y. Now, the more experienced cutters did break out of this at times, and that was OK. As the season progressed, more patterns in the offense started emerging as players found consistent effective strategies within the offense. I even designed a couple new drills last spring specifically to reinforce good flow patterns that I had seen for the first time on the field.
To me, the idea of teaching someone field sense by just making them figure things out on their own is as likely to create bad habits as it is good field sense. Just keep adding to your players’ internal playbooks. Eventually, if they have any instincts, they will be able to start applying all those rules to different situations. That’s how you teach field sense.
Jim touched on this topic, but his “applications” don’t definitely support either the “principles” camp or the “scripted” camp.
I find this interesting because, for the most part, I am firmly in the "scripted" or, perhaps better, the "specifics" camp. I think that in the short term, you help players be effective by giving them simple rules on the field. Only as a player develops and becomes comfortable playing some role will they develop real “field sense”. The obvious question is, does giving a newer player specific rules on what to do on the field impede their learning more nuanced rules? My opinion is not only no, but utter diametric disagreement – by giving them rules, you give them a framework upon which to hang exceptions and additions, until their internal, instinctive “playbook” develops into a fully nuanced field sense. By giving rules, I am building a young player’s field sense from the ground up.
As I said before on the coaching blog, the Purdue Women’s offense last year had a rather rigid structure. In particular, it was possible for a cutter to be effective by following extremely simple rules – when the handlers do A, I do B; when the handlers do X, I do Y. Now, the more experienced cutters did break out of this at times, and that was OK. As the season progressed, more patterns in the offense started emerging as players found consistent effective strategies within the offense. I even designed a couple new drills last spring specifically to reinforce good flow patterns that I had seen for the first time on the field.
To me, the idea of teaching someone field sense by just making them figure things out on their own is as likely to create bad habits as it is good field sense. Just keep adding to your players’ internal playbooks. Eventually, if they have any instincts, they will be able to start applying all those rules to different situations. That’s how you teach field sense.
# posted by Tarr : 2/28/2006 04:13:00 PM
