With high school basketball starting TOMORROW, there are a lot of things that you are probably working out to excel in tryouts. Working on you skills, your footwork and everything else it takes to be successful on the court, building your confidence before you begin the season. You’re probably saying things like “I want to make varsity,” or “I want to be the best player on the court.” But the best way to build the most confidence is by changing those “I want to” statements to “I’m going to” statements. By saying this, it will change your mindset behind the things you want to accomplish. Going into the season, this mindset is what is going to have coaches and other players talking about the confidence that you exude. Now where does that confidence begin?
Your skills. Continuing to build your skills throughout the season is essential. You know that you want to excel in tryouts, but it all begins with skill building. You work hard at developing them before the season, but then once tryouts are over and practice starts, you start playing for someone else’s program and on someone else’s time. This is where you skill development starts to deteriorate, but there is a simple fix. If you tell yourself that you are going to get to the gym 15 minutes early and stay 15 minutes after solely to work on your skills on your own time, it sets a tone and an example for the other people you’re playing with. Continuously working towards your personal progress is beneficial because you will be more confident in game situations and you will make your team better overall, knowing your role on the court.
This role is bigger than you might think. Once your role is defined, you teach your team the ways they can depend on you and you can continue to build on that role. This is what a player does for their team. Having a role based off of your skills and your confidence leads to having a better team overall. On the other hand, when you play outside of your role, it diminishes the quality of your team overall; it diminishes your confidence. The biggest takeaway: understand the role and expand on it every single day. This doesn’t necessarily mean you will see a large improvement every single day, but as long as you work towards expanding it, you will see a difference.
As a player and a team, when you make a commitment to continue to improve, say “I’m going to” instead of “I want to,” and define your role, you will become the most confident player and have the best season yet.
Watts Basketball is Seattle’s premiere institution for player development. Through basketball, we teach strength, concentration, tenacity, and enjoyment of the game. We do all this because we believe basketball skills empower personal growth. That’s what makes us Gamechangers. For Life.
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