There is one issue that worries me a lot in youth basketball. It is the way we coaches deal with and manage our teams’ victories and defeats, the well-known winning or losing.

More specifically in cases where the difference between one team and the other is such that the final result of the match could come to be considered humiliating for the loser.

Think about a result of 135-8 in basketball, 27-0 in football or a similar outcome in any other sport. The first reflection we make is how the boys and girls on the losing team will feel when faced with a scoreboard of this kind. And a series of terms inherent in this reality immediately come to mind: humiliation, abuse, lack of respect, etc. by the winner.

It should be said that results like these are not uncommon in early youth categories and that the governing bodies establish corrective mechanisms to mitigate the negative effects that such differences may have on boys and girls of such a young age.

How a coach manages a team’s winning or losing

In my life as a coach, I have experienced the situation we are discussing today from both perspectives, as the winner and as the loser, and I can assure you that managing results of this nature is not easy either for the coach who wins or for the one who loses. What can we do?

In basketball, for example, when a game reaches a difference of forty points, the score at that moment is recorded as the final score from the federation’s point of view.

At the same time, the winning team is prevented from pressing over the full court, forcing them to defend only in the defensive half and, in addition, the clock is not stopped until the end of the game.
In my life as a coach, I have experienced the situation we are discussing today from both perspectives, as the winner and as the loser, and I can assure you that managing results of this nature is not easy either for the coach who wins or for the one who loses. What can we do?

AS THE WINNING COACH:

I start from the fact that I obviously do not want to humiliate, abuse or show a lack of respect towards the opposing team at any time, nor will I allow any of my players to do so. From this initial premise, what can I do?

Ceasing to work would indeed, to me, seem to be a lack of respect towards the opponent; showing commiseration and pity is, in some way, demonstrating the opponent’s inferiority.

We then implement what we call “style rules”, that is, conditions within the game that allow us to continue learning and improving in those aspects we are working on according to our planning. I’ll give some examples:

• Defending without defensive help, which encourages individual responsibility from my players.
• Guard the passing lanes without stealing the ball.
• Time of possession with the highest intensity but without stealing the ball.
• Finishing all fast breaks with a jump shot instead of a lay-up.
• Finishing all attacks with an outside shot.

In short, actions that limit extending the advantage but that, at the same time, do not restrict my players’ ability to work and learn. Also—why not—for the learning of the opposing team as well.

COACH OF THE LOSING TEAM:

The key figure in managing these situations. First of all, they must assess the technical level of their group when choosing the category in which they want to compete.

If, despite everything, they decide to sign up their team at the highest level, they must be aware of this and must mentally prepare their boys or girls for it.

Also, prepare the parents (sometimes it is the parents who feel really humiliated and not their children).

In the end, and as a summary, I will say something that is basic in teaching: much more important than the result of what we teach is the process we follow to achieve it.

Secondly—and this should be the key to everything—they must approach every game and the entire competition as another means of learning, rather than in terms of winning or losing.

Often with an adverse (or even very adverse) score you learn a lot. But to do this, we must set very specific and achievable objectives, and if these are met, we should consider that we have won because, even if the final score says otherwise, we have achieved the objectives that were set.

Let me give you a very specific example: I know that the team I am playing the next day is clearly superior to mine, especially in physical terms. So I propose the objective that in every rebounding action, my players should block the opposing player. Notice that the proposal is to block, not to get the rebound because the physical superiority of the opponent is such that it would be very difficult to achieve this objective.

Given that it is an achievable goal, if we meet it, we have won, regardless of the result at the end of the game, and I have used the competition as a very important means of learning. No one has to feel humiliated because we have all learned something, we have all won.

In the end, and as a summary, I will say something that is basic in teaching: much more important than the result of what we teach is the process we follow to achieve it. And let us never forget that we youth coaches are first and foremost teachers.