Defense and support!

One Team season, Euroleague and basketball clubs social project, started for our team in February. This week our club hosted the third clinic in Moscow Suvorov Military School.

CSKA representatives work with group of 11-year old boys, many of them are orphans or kids from troubled families. This time clinic was hosted by Yakov Tarasov, One Team coach.

The whole lesson was devoted to the development of skills, which the game cannot be played without and CSKA main team pays a lot of attention to – defense. In the beginning of the clinic coach explained to the boys why defense is considered one of the most important things in basketball. Pupils started to learn first basic element – position. They tried hard to copy all the moves to stay stable. Once boys became confident in positioning they went to defensive slide. It seemed to be a simple drill, but the cadets had to exert a lot of effort to do it properly. After that Yakov showed boys step drill: if you do it correctly your legs will “burn” and that will help to develop speed and jump. Perhaps the step was the most difficult task for the boys, who had never played basketball before. Then pupils trained jumping, dribbling, learn how not to make travelling, to look for a good pass moving on one foot and making passes in squares – where the main thing was not to make a turnover. Last drill helped children a lot to feel themselves as a part of one team, boys supported each other and tried to pass right in partner’s hands. After that they shot special free throws. If a pupil made a good shot – he came to coach and said him his good trait of character on his opinion, if not – bad trait. Such free throws helped children to recognize themselves, to understand how they may correct their bad traits and enhance good ones.

In the end coach discussed with boys the importance of sports in lifestyle, cadets shared impressions and told what they learned speaking not about the drill exactly but the social moment such as support the teammate, empathy, striving the reach the goals and feeling of being the part of a team.