The incredibly short high-school season

Pursuing too many goals creates an impossible challenge for high-school coaches

I started a new high-school coaching job this week. The official first day of practice for varsity boys’ high-school basketball was December 1. Our playoffs, should we qualify, start on February 9.

We played our first game on Friday (December 8) after three practices. I texted with a friend who coaches U20 in Europe, and Saturday (December 9) was his final game before the holiday break. They will resume their season in January.

Every state is different; I know some schools have been playing for weeks, if not months. However, how do we expect coaches to develop players in a two-month season with two games per week?

We play 20 games plus any possible playoff games. We played no preseason scrimmages or tournaments. The 20 games are within two months with 10 days off between games in the middle for the holiday break. Our season is nine weeks, plus playoffs. My elementary school season was longer.

My U16s in Europe played 14 league games. We played five games in a preseason tournament. The winner received a trophy, but the tournament did not count for anything and was primarily for experience. We played three games in the qualification tournament (The top eight teams qualified for the A division, and the next 12 played in the B division). We played four games to win the cup, and four playoff games to win the championship. We played 30 total games. Our season was nine months long! We started in mid August and ended in late May. We took off about two and a half weeks for the holidays, although the players in the national team pool spent roughly 10 days training and playing in a tournament.

The qualification games were used to separate teams to create more competitive league games as opposed to dividing teams by population or regions. We had to finish in the top two of our four-team group to advance to the A division. We did not have an away game within 90 minutes because most of the top clubs were located in the capital city with a majority of the population. The qualifications occurred every year; teams were not placed into a league or division based on previous results with players who may not be with the same club or in the same age group anymore, unlike high school leagues and divisions that often are determined by location or previous success with a different group of players or by shoe affiliation in AAU/club.

Naturally, many high-school players play AAU during the spring, summer, and fall, and many high schools, although not here apparently, play in spring, fall, and summer leagues. Following coaches on Twitter, I can never tell when high school starts and AAU ends or when the offseason occurs; from a cursory view, it seems like tournaments every weekend. Basketball never stops.

Our U16s played in the EYBL and the U18B league to play more games and against better competition. We played 20 EYBL games: Three stages with five games per stage and five games at the Super Finals. We played 22 games in the U18B league. EYBL stages occurred on weekends (Friday to Sunday), and we would not play other games in those weeks; local teams would re-schedule league games. U16 league games were played on Saturdays and U18 league games on Sundays, which meant occasionally we played both days on the weekends. In the spring, a few U16s played on the men’s second division team for a few games too.

With these games, we played 72 total games between August and June (not counting men’s games). Players who played with the national team during the winter and summer probably played another 10-15 games.

Often, in the U.S., we hear the problem is too many games. Our best players played close to 90 games in a calendar year (not really), but we rarely hear about Europeans sacrificing development to play too many games.

Nobody played in every game. Nobody could have. For example, we sent our U15s to a few of the U18B games because we were at an EYBL stage. There is no limit on a team’s games because rosters are fluid; we had 16 players on the U16 team, but FIBA allows only 12 to be rostered for each game. The Federation also has a game limit, which I believe was 55 or 60 for U16s, although not every game (National team, the preseason tournament) counted, and no player was dangerously close to the limit.

The expectation with my high-school team now is every player is at every practice and game, regardless of playing time. We have minimal practices, and players missing due to illnesses or taking a test or whatever further limits the practices, especially when it is a starter. Often, coaches do not play a player who missed or was late to a practice.

I only had to choose a team a few times despite the four extra players for our U16 roster. Vacations, class trips, injuries, illnesses, and more often decided who was available each weekend. Only once did we not have a full 12, I believe, and only at the final four and the EYBL Super Finals did we have to sit healthy, available players. Missing practices was not a big deal. The season was long. Families take vacations. Schools take trips (Our players attended 10 different schools, I believe). We rarely had everyone at practice.

Our schedule was the same nearly every week. We expected everyone playing on Saturday to be at the Friday practice, and we focused on more strategy and tactics at these practices. Our Monday to Wednesday practices were general, focused more on small-sided games and skill development. We practiced actions that were part of our offense or defense, such as an on-ball screen and different ways to defend an on-ball screen, but in general games, not specific plays for specific players.

This season, we play our 20 games on every day of the week except Sunday. There is no weekly schedule; every week differs in practice days, game days, number of games, and more. Occasionally we have three practices before a game, as with our first game; sometimes we play on back to back days.

In terms of development, it is easy to see how our European schedule promotes development more so than the American schedule, although the number of games may be similar between players, especially those who play with the national team during the summer.

The biggest difference is playing for one organization throughout the year (not counting the national team) with coaches who work together for the players. Like here, players played for multiple teams and in multiple competitions that overlapped and conflicted with each other, but these teams were within one organization with a single director who ultimately had the final say on who played in which games or for which team. The director may decide to have two players play in the men’s game on Thursday night, and miss the U16 league game on Saturday. Missing the league game may affect the standings, but ultimately the decisions were made based on what was best for the players, not individual teams.

The other major difference promoting development is the weekly schedule with games on Saturdays. With the long season, the one-game per week schedule worked. With a nine-week high school season, teams have to play at least two games per week. The August to May schedule provides time; the high-school season is rushed.

I have said previously one of the easiest solutions to promote development in the U.S. would be to lengthen the season, but we argue it is not possible because of football or spring sports or gym availability with volleyball. Of course, in many places, these high schools manage to play fall and summer leagues, and AAU seems to be played year-round in gyms, so it is hard to justify either argument.

The real problem is coaches and schools do not want to lose a game in the fall when their best player plays football or miss a player late in the season to a baseball tournament. One of our best players skipped an EYBL stage to race rally cars. We would rather rush through a season than create a schedule that benefits the players. We separate sports into seasons because coaches cannot work together to share players who want to play multiple sports (very few European basketball players play multiple sports beyond 12 years old in my experiences). Everything is focused on winning.

The advantages of the U.S. system are the ability for athletes to play multiple high-school sports because of the separate seasons, increased participation, and diversity of experiences. My high school is in a city of around 120,000 people within a larger city of half a million people; my city in Europe was just shy of 100,000 people, although we drew some players from beyond the city because there was nowhere to play in their smaller towns. Our city essentially had one U16 boys team; we also had an U15 team, and we had an U16 “rec” team in the C division, but those were players more like high-school lunch intramural sports: They were not in the competitive stream anymore and only practiced once per week. Altogether, essentially fewer than 40 boys played basketball at U15/16 in a city of 100,000 people, whereas there are at least 10 high schools with varsity basketball teams in my city now. Many more adolescents have an opportunity to play high-school basketball. As I mentioned, my U16s represented 10 different schools, at which only one to three boys played basketball, whereas the 10 high schools each have 12+ players playing high-school basketball.

Also, for good or bad, players here have the opportunity to play AAU. Playing for one club year-round has benefits, but what happens if you do not fit the coach’s system? Our second best U18 player had quit basketball because of the previous coach; his options were move two hours away to finish high school living on his own and playing for a new club or quit. Our second best U16 player and national team starter played the previous season for a recreation team because he did not want to play for the previous coach.

A high-school player here has more opportunities to transfer high schools, and also can play AAU for a different coach. I always thrived in summer camps and leagues with different coaches because they allowed me to run on-ball screens, shoot three-pointers, and play to my strengths, whereas my school coaches were very structured and centered around guards entering the ball to the post and staying out of the way. Playing for different coaches in different environments helped me.

With my U16s, I acknowledged I was not the right coach for one of our more talented players. I and the organization director differed in our opinions of a few other players. One team and one coach does not work as well for development when the player and the coach do not mesh. Several of the players about whom I disagreed with the owners have left to play in overseas academies, seeking better opportunities because the owners did not believe the players had big futures, whereas two were the players I identified as the two best talents almost from day one. We saw things differently.

Year-round with one coach and one organization is great when you are the coach’s type of player, but what happens when you are a 6’10 post playing for a dribble-drive-motion coach, as with one of our opponents? Is that a good environment? Would the player benefit from being able to transfer more easily or play with a different team/coach during the spring and summer?

Every decision has multiple consequences. Lengthening the high-school season would improve the environment for development, but also may limit who plays basketball, and the experience would depend largely on one’s coach. Shortening the season focuses the high-school season more on the immediate and winning, but also creates opportunities for players to seek development elsewhere or play additional sports. A nine-week high school season is simply unserious if we envision using high-school sports as anything more than a fun extracurricular experience, and if that is our goal, we should keep everyone who tries out rather than cutting players.

Our problem is we want high-school sports to accomplish all goals: Win, develop talent, teach life lessons, play multiple sports, be inclusive, have fun, stay healthy, engage other students, create community, etc. We create impossible expectations for high-school coaches. In the pursuit of keeping everyone happy and meeting dozens of goals, we have created a system that struggles to accomplish any.

The European system is not perfect, but it’s goals are more clear: For the most part, fun, multi-sport participation, inclusivity (some do move players cut from teams to refereeing, scorekeeping, and more to increase club membership), school spirit, and more are ignored, and the club’s goals center around developing players’ skills for the next level of competition.