What are your "free throws"?
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
“Success is often found in the perfection of minor details.” -UCLA Mens Basketball coaching legend John Wooden
Neither my parents nor my siblings really played or followed sports. In spite of that, I've found myself surrounded by sports at different points in my life. Among those...basketball was the one I spent the most time playing.
As I got older and began raising my own kids, two of them decided they wanted to be basketball players. In both cases, I became their coach. I knew a lot about the game, but had never been a coach.
As I fed my head about coaching, one of the fun secrets I discovered is that coaches will often end practice by having players take free throws. At first, this choice seems questionable because these basic shots highlight many of the game's fundamental skills. However, free throws are often taken under pressure at the end of a game and can determine the winner or loser in the closing seconds. The roads of mental toughness, physical exhaustion, and diligent preparation often meet at those critical moments.
Why does it matter?
Think of a classroom outcome that requires significant mental toughness…and have kids work on it at the end of a lesson. Again, just a few minutes where kids can focus on something relatively routine, but where the mental exhaustion of having just completed a lesson might make it tricky.
One of my jobs is middle school choral education. In addition to using sight-reading to decode the parts they sing, sight reading tests show up at choral festivals, AT THE END. That's right...after a very nerve-wracking and exhausting stage performance and adjudication...NOW we gotta sight-read...for a JUDGE. Some years, my kids have struggled not because they weren't good sight readers, but because of timing. So, I've learned to save sight reading practice until the end of rehearsal.
Dear snackers...what are your free throws?
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Happy snacking!
Chef Charles
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