Home / Ages / Middle School
MIDDLE SCHOOL
The years before high school tryouts are about skill, not results
Sixth through eighth grade is when a player either builds real skill or learns to hide the weaknesses. Blacktop Academy trains middle school players outdoors in Bellevue, Newport and Swope, one player at a time, at $200 per session.
01 / STRAIGHT ANSWER
What should a middle school basketball player be working on?
Ball handling with both hands against pressure, footwork into a shot, finishing at the rim off either foot, and reading a defender instead of guessing. The work at this age is repetition. A middle schooler who can handle the ball and make a decision at full speed walks into a high school tryout ready.
Most middle school players spend the large majority of their basketball hours playing games. Games show what a player can already do. They do not add anything new. Skill comes from repetition and drill work, done correctly, over and over, until it holds up with someone guarding you. There are no shortcuts to that part, and anybody telling a parent otherwise is selling something.
The other half of the work is decision making. Basketball is a game of split-second decisions. If a player has only ever practiced a move with nobody in front of them, the move disappears the first time a defender closes out hard. So a live read gets added on top of every skill as soon as the skill itself is stable enough to survive it.
Every plan is built for the individual player: the position they play, the body they have right now, and the way they already like to play. A guard who is going to grow six inches in two years and a post player who is already the tallest kid on the floor do not get the same session. That is also why the work is done one player at a time instead of in a group.
Everything happens outdoors, at Bellevue Beach Park in Bellevue, at a court in Newport, or at Swope. That is a choice, not a budget problem. Wind, a dead rim, a rough surface and real weather take away the small comforts a gym gives you, and a player who can repeat a skill in those conditions can repeat it anywhere.
02 / THE WORK
What a middle school session actually covers
Four areas, weighted differently for every player depending on what they already do well.
- 01
Handling the ball against pressure
Both hands, tight space, live defender. The goal is a player who can advance the ball up the floor without needing a teammate to come bail them out.
- 02
Footwork and finishing at the rim
Off either foot, off one foot and two, with contact and with a body in the way. Most missed layups at this age are footwork problems, not shooting problems.
- 03
A shot that will still work at sixteen
Middle schoolers often shoot from the hip because that is the only way they can reach the rim. We build a base and a release that does not have to be torn down and rebuilt in high school.
- 04
Reading the defender, not the drill
Every skill gets a live read layered on top of it, so the decision is trained at the same speed the game will ask for it. A move without a read is a trick.
04 / WORKLOAD
What the research says about doing too much
Greater than a two to one increase in injury rate was found when organized play displaces free play in young athletes.
Share of Olympians who played more than one sport as children, which is the opposite of the year round single sport plan many families are sold.
More than sixteen hours a week of intense training, or more hours per week than the athlete is old, warrants monitoring for burnout and overuse injury.
Early specialization is defined in part as intensive training in one sport more than eight months a year. If your player is over that line, I will say so out loud.
05 / Questions
What people ask about this
Is my sixth grader too young for private training?
No, if the sessions are teaching skill rather than running them into the ground. Sixth grade is a good time to fix footwork and a shooting base, because there is time to be bad at the new version before it counts. The thing to watch is total load across every team and every trainer, not the age on the birth certificate.
Should my kid quit their other sport to focus on basketball?
I would not. The AOSSM consensus statement reports that 88 percent of Olympians played more than one sport as children, and defines early specialization partly as intensive training in one sport more than eight months a year, with a greater than two to one injury rate increase when organized play crowds out free play. A second sport is not stealing basketball time at this age.
How often should a middle school player train?
It depends entirely on what else is on the calendar. For a player already carrying a school season and an AAU schedule, one session every week or two is usually right, and the offseason is where the volume goes. I will build the plan around the total, not around how many sessions I would like to sell.
Where do sessions happen and what if it rains?
Bellevue Beach Park in Bellevue, a court in Newport, or Swope. All three are outdoor public courts. There is no gym and no indoor backup, which is deliberate. If weather makes a court unusable we move the session rather than force it, and you will hear from me before you drive out there.