I have coached sports for many, many years. There is little that I do, if ever, in practice or games that does not have some sort of reasoning behind it. There is always a reason for what I am doing. You may not agree with that reasoning, but there is a reason; mine.
I have caught myself questioning coaches myself, then when asking the coach what was going on, they tell you information that I could not know unless I was coaching. Unless I knew what was going on within the team and its players. When I have questioned then I find out this info, I get upset with myself because the questioning has happened to me before, and I do not like it.
This past weekend, I was coaching my daughter's little basketball team. We were up 12 with about 1:30 to go and the other team was allowed to press and I had no timeouts left. My fear was that the other team would score, steal it as they pressed, and keep scoring...a lot in a short amount of time. It is a team that is thrown together, so we haven't practiced and probably won't. But with no timeout, I could not draw anything up if we were pressed. It was conceivable that the other team could have scored a lot in a short amount of time.
I wanted our girls to back off defensively. I wanted them to just keep their girl in front of them because at the 4th grade level, that makes it real hard to score. Pressure allows for the defense to score, but it also allows the offense to have more open shots. I wanted the time to run off, I wanted the girls to dribble around for 20-30 seconds before shooting, so that we would have less time to turn it over and allow the worst case scenario from happening. All the while, our parents are yelling for our girls to pressure the ball.
They didn't know what I was trying to do. They didn't understand what was going on in my mind and what I was wanting to do to ensure that we win. You just never know what is going on in the mind of a coach, but I can bet that there is something going on, some reasoning.
So relax, it's under control, at least I think.
