Advice for a beginning HS coach

[keroberous]

Hello all. I am new to this forum but I've been doing some reading and I am hoping to get some advice.

I will be coaching a high school level badminton team this year. I am familiar with the basics of badminton, but I have not coached before. Badminton has traditionally been popular at our school, but no other teacher was willing to take it on, so a group of students approached me to coach after several years without it due to covid. I am not a phys ed teacher, so. my experience is very limited.

I was looking for some advice on how to structure the try outs and practices. For try outs, do most people just organize a mini-tournament and winners make the team? Or is there something more structured (i.e. drills)? What is your focus during practices, in terms of drills vs. playing time?

I haven't been able to find a lot of information so any advice would be much appreciated since I'm essentially on my own.

TIA!

 

[ralphz]

If you haven't been coached yourself then I don't think you can meaningfully coach badminton cos you won't have any of the technique.

As for drills have you personally taken part in those drills.. I think you have to do drills you know.

My advice to you would be to attend a group training yourself and watch the drills done there. Eg one is lift drop then two or three net shots and a repeat. And you get to practise drops. Half court singles is another thing that people practise if there isn't room for everybody to have a singles game.

And if you see a coach when you attend a group training then you could even offer them the job!

 

[Cheung]

Rather than coaching, your role will be more organisation.

Tryouts very much depend upon your facilities and the number of courts you have. The ones to weed out are the ones who don’t run at all or miss a shuttle more than can hit it. You would need to look at max numbers of students that the sessions can handle. Of course, if there are spaces, then there are openings for lower ability players.



Have a whistle and stop watch. These are good aids to have.

Allocate a set time for warm up, running, core exercises, agility exercises. Running exercises you can divide people up into teams for relay. I think these can really benefit high school students a lot as it helps them run to areas of the court better and stay in balance. Lots of exercises on the YouTube. Apart from body weight lunges across the court and body weight squats, get them to do bear crawls.



Some jumping exercises up and down and left and right are also good for balance.



make them do some HIIT.

 

[Cheung]

Shuttle runs are always a good exercise that everyone can do. All courts start on a whistle.

You can consider the advanced students helping out demonstrating to the lesser ability students. The advanced students can challenge themselves more doing the same shuttle runs but faster pace and concentrating on keeping their centre of gravity lower. There are various different patterns for shuttle runs - recommend getting a student or two to help research four or five favourite patterns so that they can rotate the patterns on different weeks.

Probably a lot of students will groan at doing shuttle runs but just tell them it’s part of foundational skills that even the pros can do.

 

[viver]

One thing to also keep in mind is, if you plan to do higher intensity drills, do pauses and check the students conditions. Ask them to check their pulses/heart beats; should stop the exercises if any of them are not feeling well.

I once was working with high school students. On the first day, in order to know them better, after the warm-up I asked the group to do the footwork patterns, 30 seconds each and after the second one 1 student looked pale. Asked everyone to check their pulses, most had around 160 and that particular student that looked pale had, if I remember correctly over 180. I stopped this student to continue with the remainder of the drills.

 

[BadmintonDave]

I was looking for some advice on how to structure the try outs and practices

Weirdly enough, I would encourage you to put out a questionnaire prior to people trying out. A few days before, you can go through the responses and that will better aid the structure of the practices etc. Age, have they played before, prefer singles / doubles, strengths, weaknesses etc.

Any drill you do has to have a purpose. Be it seeing the competence of the individuals at playing the shot / situation, or improving their weaknesses. It's also worth noting that even if someone fails your team tryouts, you could still use them and improve them

Depending on the numbers you have, and the courts available we regularly do half court singles for 2.5 minutes a match on my Sunday group. Usually have 10-12 students, and we do 4-6 rounds. Winners move up half a court, losers move down half a court. Everyone remembers their scores and adds them all up at the end. Statistically, the best singles players should end up further to the right of the courts.

A variation you can do of this is forcing them to only do high / short serves. Or having the midcourt in and the net and rearcourt out. Or vise versa. This forces them to think about tactics and placement of shots.

If you have some more advanced players, you can challenge them by doing things like 1v2, 2v3 or challenge them to win without smashing etc.

 

[keroberous]

Thank you for all the tips. They were very helpful! It turns out that we'll have about 50 students trying out for the team and we have nine courts, so I'll have to get a little creative to fit everyone in!

 

[BadmintonDave]

Thank you for all the tips. They were very helpful! It turns out that we'll have about 50 students trying out for the team and we have nine courts, so I'll have to get a little creative to fit everyone in!

It's definitely do-able.

My top tip would be don't rely on yourself to do everything. That's a lot of courts to watch over at once and you'd want at a minimum 2 helpers to help you out.

 

[Cheung]

Thank you for all the tips. They were very helpful! It turns out that we'll have about 50 students trying out for the team and we have nine courts, so I'll have to get a little creative to fit everyone in!

that’s a great number to get and a great number of courts available!

With that number of courts you don’t need to limit anybody. Getting assistants to help is definitely needed.

 

[JerrySXiao]

Hi, greetings

I am the head coach for a Junior badminton team, so I think I can give you some advice.

First, you have to know what the characteristics of each player are, including technical characteristics and physical characteristics，what are they good at, what are they bad at. So you can make sure who are your key players.

Second, you need to know the dates of the games you are facing.

Third, divide training phases according to match dates.

Fourth, make a training schedule for each training phases, must be make details for each players, especially for the key players. Try your best to help the key players achieve good results, and help other players improve their skills.

So this is a big training framework, I hope it can be useful to you.

Good luck.