To be One Team

Our club hosted the next clinic in Moscow Suvorov Military School as part of One Team, Euroleague and basketball clubs social project. This time children were considerably encouraged prior to the beginning of clinic, having seen that together with the project manager Yakov Tarasov there has arrived on clinic the Olympic champion and the One Team ambassador Sergey Tarakanov.

Before the lesson pupils did good warm-up and discussed what unites army and CSKA. We were pleased that boys answered correctly all the questions about army sport. Later boys remembered what they learned at last clinic: step, dribbling and defensive slide. Further Sergey Tarakanov paid much attention to three elements: shot, rebound and pass. The students divided into two groups and trained the skills in this sequence. Children were standing around three-second zone, one player with a ball made a shot, took rebound and gave a pass to any partner of the team and so on by a chain. Tarakanov often stopped exercise and explained frequent mistakes – it is necessary to run quicker to get rebound, and give a pass more sharply. It is obvious that for several clinics cadets definitely loved this game.

The boys liked amusing and simple relay: there were two teams, one player dribbled towards a basket, made a shot and hurried back to pass a ball to his teammate. The shot was the main hitch, of course. Losers were making push-ups. In the second relay children needed to sit down back by back in a chain. Task: to pass a ball back to the partner then it is necessary to run across in the end of the line and to be ready to take and pass a ball further. The fastest team became the winner.

After relays coaches discussed with cadets why such games were played, asked whether children have noticed that in the beginning they loudly screamed at their partners, and only at the end of the second relay they understood that shouts don’t help, while sincere support helps. Students have noted it for themselves with surprise and Sergey Tarakanov made a conclusion that it is necessary to work on chemistry, but if there is a diligence, then everything will turn out well.