Inside a HoopLife Practice Plan: How We Build 75 Minutes

Most youth basketball practice is whatever the volunteer coach remembered on the drive over. No blame in that: they are giving their evening for free. But it is the reason so many kids play for years without ever being taught the game in order.

We decided a long time ago that nothing on our floor would work that way. So here is what a HoopLife practice actually is, from the book our coaches carry.

The shape of the 75 minutes

Every practice in the book has the same skeleton: a warm-up with a purpose, then five drills, each with its own time box and its own diagram. A typical page reads like this:

• Warm-up (12 min): pass, cut, replace and score. Two-hand accurate passes in rhythm, finishing with both hands.
• Drill 1 (12 min): defensive shell. On the ball: stance and positioning. Off the ball: help position and shifting as the ball moves.
• Drills 2-4: the week's concept, built in steps: walk it, add a defender, then play through it live.
• Drill 5 (12 min): scrimmage, focused on what was just taught, corrected on the fly rather than by stopping the game.

Two rules sit over every page. Drills go live as fast as possible, because a skill that only works unopposed is not a skill yet. And nobody stands in a line: the drills are built so every player is moving, touching the ball and making reads.

Why it is written down

Writing the practices down does three things a memory cannot.

It sequences. Week four builds on week three. The cutting concept your kid learns in one practice becomes the spacing rule for the next one, and the game they scrimmage at the end of the season looks nothing like the one at the start.

It keeps every group honest. Two divisions in the same grade get the same curriculum, whichever coach is holding the whistle. The plan is the standard.

It lets coaches coach. A coach who is not inventing the next drill on the spot has all their attention left for the actual job: watching your kid and correcting the habit while it happens.

The same system, everywhere we coach

The practice books drive the HoopLife League, where every division's head coach works from the book for their grade. The same written coaching library, built around four training themes: off-ball movement, defence and communication, creating advantages, and shooting, runs our weekly training sessions and our camps. Even our travelling coaches carry it: a community clinic in northern Saskatchewan runs on the same written curriculum a Tuesday night in Regina does.

If you want to see what the concepts are grade by grade, we wrote that out too: what kids learn at each age.

What to ask any program

Not just ours. Wherever your kid plays this year, two questions tell you most of what you need to know: can I see what the practices are building toward, and how much of each practice is live play? A program with good answers to both is doing right by your kid. We are happy to be held to the same standard, because the answers are written down.