With the high school season over and AAU getting underway I thought it’d be a great time to touch on player evaluations. When I was coaching we used to do them at the beginning and end of each season with individual player meetings throughout the year. If your coach doesn’t provide you with an evaluation, ask him or her for one — especially if you are playing AAU and have the next 4 months to work on your individual skills. You can track your progress and hopefully get another evaluation at the end of the AAU season from your coach.
When I played one thing I always looked forward to was being evaluated at the end of the season or at a camp. I think the reason why can be summed up in two sentences I picked up from a great book, Winning, by Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE. I couldn’t say it any better than this.
“Maybe some information is hard to swallow at first and yes, ‘bad’ news often hurts, but soon enough, like all knowledge-it’s power-in fact, it’s liberating. When you know where you stand you can control your own destiny, and what is more fair than that?”
Take the beginning of the season evaluation from your AAU coach and set relevant, realistic goals. In Jay Bilas’s book, Toughness, he talks about how great Coach K is at setting short, attainable goals – this keeps you motivated and wanting to receive or come up with the next goal. For more on goal setting check out Luke Meier’s 3 part article here.
So the question is, “What are you going to do now?” Are you going to sit around and feel sorry for yourself because the coach said you needed to work on your jumper or get in the weight room? Or are you going to form your organized plan of attack and get to work?