Sports clinics for life

Sports clinics are aplenty every summer, covering all sports and all ages. Every gym or multi-purpose facility is booked for either clinics for basketball, volleyball, taekwondo and other sports, while all of Cebu’s pools area awash with swimming lessons. Summer is obviously the best time for these clinics since the students don’t have classes and these sports clinics end up as “summer classes” for them. But why do sports clinics exist? Why send your children to these clinics? Let’s review this and you be the judge if you’re sending your kids to the right clinic and for the right reasons.

Sports clinics are organized to teach the basics of the sport to its students, with the main goal of introducing the student to the sport. No more. No less. Should things go well, the student will take up the sport more seriously by trying out for his school or club’s team. What basics are we referring to? Before an athlete can go into serious sports competitions, he or she has to learn the fundamentals of the sport.

The most important fundamental is to develop one’s interest for the sport. Different strokes for different folks. There are those who like basketball over football and vice versa. Ditto for volleyball, taekwondo, swimming and other sports. Once the interest is present, the child will be more serious about learning the other important fundamentals. Surprisingly, some are very similar among sports. For ballgames like basketball, football and volleyball, ball control and ball “feel” is the second most important fundamental. The similarities don’t stop there. All also have passing, shooting and throwing as well. Emphasis is also placed on agility, movement, the proper way to run, jump, change direction and how to maintain balance, all these crucial to all sports. There are a host of other basics on which all sports must focus and which all students must master. By mastery, it doesn’t mean a perfect execution but learning how to do the basic drills, poses or actions. This mastery prepares one for his next involvement in the sport: that of joining a team or ballclub. Basketball has shooting, passing and defensive lateral movement. Football has the different passes, use of the feet, use of the head, and running without the ball; while volleyball basics include proper form in receiving, serving, tossing, blocking and spiking. If your kids are enrolled in sports clinics, do you notice the emphasis on the basics over the need to win games? Do you notice the need for learning over the need to win at all costs?

My benchmark will be the basketball clinics in Europe. There are two types of licensed coaches there. There are coaches whose main task is to teach the basics of the sport. They are not coaches of basketball teams or camps. They are teachers of basketball schools. Then there are coaches who coach basketball teams, whether this be at the club or pro levels. These are two different set of coaches. One is a teacher while the other is a professional coach. Note the difference? Unfortunately for us in the Philippines, we still don’t have this distinction. We always have the notion that a basketball coach is automatically a good basketball teacher. True or false?

Another way to look at sports clinics is how and why these should not be carried out. Yes, there are practitioners of sports who are into it for the wrong reasons, believe it or not. Sports clinics shouldn’t be organized to make money or to simply kill time over the summer. This is self-explanatory. I rest my case. Another wrong reason for putting up sports clinics is to put up/establish a team. Clinics are for the basics. If one wants to put up a team, then training camps are the answer. But most players here would most likely come from basketball clinics.

Note that training in the basics never stops. Today’s superstars continue to train in the basics and even hire skills coaches to help them. Seen in Facebook and youtube are videos of Steph Curry and Lebron James doing ball-handling drills before an actual NBA game. These are the very same drills conducted in basketball clinics around the world. At the BEST Center of Milo, these are the 14 basic ball-handling drills which are mastered by students. The spider drill is the most popular and most filmed drill of the lot. If you were from my generation, you should remember Chip Engelland. He was an excellent outside shooter with a great shooting form. Today, he’s the shooting coach of the San Antonio Spurs who works on the shooting basics of all the Spurs.

Ironically, sports clinics that are well-run and done for the right reasons are actually classrooms for skills needed in life. There will be failures, tests and progress. It’s a great opportunity for experiential learning where one doesn’t have a choice but to learn on the spot, adopt, commit mistakes, overcome oneself and learn all over again. Sports clinics can prepare one for life’s battles up ahead. Amazing, di ba?

Funny, but sports clinics are now more than just the basics.