A group of Tigard basketball parents were looking for some added instruction for their daughters and they ended up getting a little more than they expected.
They got a high school coaching staff.
The parents reached out to the Tigard High School girls basketball program and Ryan Taylor, athletic director for Tigard High, to talk about options and possibilities for running some clinics for girls in grades 5-8.
The coaches from the school’s girls basketball program didn’t just offer up advice, but instead offered up their time. The week clinic is currently running through the end of May led by Anna Johnson, head coach for the Tigard girls varsity team, Chris Sizemore, assistant coach at the high school, Adelbert Riodil, assistant coach at the high school, and Ross Masters, junior varsity head coach for Tigard.
“The girls had a tough end of the season,” Johnson said of her varsity squad. “But they showed a lot of development. We see this is something that could help that development start sooner.”
The clinic going on right now has 21 girls, and the parents plan on running it again in the summer. It currently runs from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Anyone interested in signing up for the summer clinic or learning more about it can email Johnson at ajohnson3@ttsd.k12.or.us.
What the coaches in the high school program have found is that the players are getting to high school without a foundation of the game. That means the coaches have to teach the game from the ground up instead of getting to jump into things like strategies and techniques.
“It’s important to connect the younger players to the coaches,” Masters said. “We want our own feeder program.”
What the coaches worried about somewhat is the high school program itself becoming a feeder program for other schools, where a Tigard player might develop her game and then want to transfer to another school. Instead, they want to help the girls learn the game sooner.
And they want to do it at as a more affordable option. Yusuf Dawoodbhai, one of the parent organizers for the new clinics, said club teams can get pretty pricey and there’s not always a ton of instruction going on.
“The first thing we want to do is get the kids excited to play basketball,” he said. “We want them coming to the gym looking forward to playing. We just had to get them here, and the coaches have just taken over.”
There also aren’t teams at the local middle schools, so the chance to get time in with actual coaches can be rare for kids in that age range. That’s why Dawoodbhai and the organizers are beyond thankful the coaches have taken over the clinics. He said originally they planned on having parent coaches.
Johnson is a coach for the school’s track team, which is in season in the spring, so the clinics are being led primarily by Sizemore and Riodil.
“We’re really trying to work on their games across the board,” Sizemore said. “We do a good deal of shooting, since everyone can use practice with that, but we want to teach them about all parts of the game.”
At a recent clinic, the two coaches led the girls on a variety of drills for their footwork and positioning, as well as dribbling the full length of the court while being defended. Their girls alternated as the ball handler and the defender.
Johnson said it’s important for the players to struggle and stick with the sport so they can improve.
“There are so many girls in that age range who feel the need to be perfect,” she said. “If they try something new and they aren’t good, they give up. But if they give up, they’re not giving themselves the chance to get better.”
Dawoodbhai thinks the clinics have just the coaches to help those girls stick with the game and get better.
“This first clinic is kind of a testing ground for what we want these to be,” he said. “You can have 10 different programs running, but it’s about the coaches and their connection to the kids. These coaches can do that, and they’re giving up their time to run the clinic because they believe in it.”
