Building Better Basketball

This weeks guest will be no stranger to you if you went and did the @asc Reflection Course last week. Lauren Robinson is coaching with @knoxbasketball at multiple levels including @nbl1 , @basketball_vic within the Wheelchair program and is leaving on Sunday in her role as manager with the @ausgliders  . On top of that for a young coach she has an incredible amount of knowledge from her own studies. This is a great episode for coaches of all levels to get an insight on reflection and the coaching journey! 
Link to Aus Sport Reflection course- How you improve | Australian Sports Commission (ausport.gov.au)
Link to etrainu resources https://basketballaustralia.etrainu.com/ 
Link to Mojo Coaching App Basketball Australia Community Coaches x MOJO = Game Changer | Basketball Australia Coaching Resource

We are recording this weeks podcast bang in the middle of National Volunteer Week (NVW) Australia’s largest annual celebration of volunteers. The theme for National Volunteer Week 2023 is The Change Makers, representing a celebration of our power to drive change and ensure volunteering is inclusive of all members of the Australian community and celebrate, thank and recognise the significant contribution of the 3 million sport volunteers. To have a chat about that Neil is joined by Scott Tutton. Scott is currently the Head of Clubs and Volunteers at Cricket Australia. Originally a Sydney boy he has spent time with the ACT Government, Clubs NSW and Netball Australia before spending the last decade in cricket across Cricket Victoria and Australia. The main reason Scott is here though is due to his role on the Sport Australia, Sport Volunteer Coalition, a panel made up of experts from the sports industry, government and volunteering, who will work together to transform the sport volunteer experience and promote the value of volunteering in sport. 

Lisa Alexander AM  coached the Australia national netball team from 2011 to 2020. Alexander coached the Diamonds for 102 test matches, becoming the most capped Australian coach of all time. She oversaw gold medal successes at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and 2015 Netball World Cup. As Australian coach Alexander won 83 of her 102 test matches, an impressive 81% winning record.
In this episode just sit back and listen to one of the best Australian coaches in any sport talk knowledgeably about mental health, success, player development, what she learned from Basketball and the deepest response to the "Ask the Coach" question we have ever had.

Ben was a determined but mediocre youth athlete and later a bench-warmer on his high school basketball and volleyball teams. But life got better when Ben gave up competitive sports. Most recently, he worked as co-chairman of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney ABC Television. Before that, he was president of ABC News and executive producer of Good Morning America. A bestselling author of four books, he is also an avid coach of his two boys in various sports. And that is where Ben's Australian story starts as the CEO of MOJO Sports. Mojo Sports are the newest partner of Basketball Australia and the creators of the exciting new Coach Development app free for all Basketball coaches in Australia. In the episode Neil and Ben run through all the amazing things the app can do to make a coaches life easier, improve the quality of practices, engage the players so in some cases they might want to practice more then play and help future coaches be volunteers instead of Voluntolds!
You can download the app here, MOJO Sports on the App Store (apple.com) . Remember to set your State or Territory as your main organisation (e.g. Basketball Victoria) so you can receive all the relevant coaching news!MOJO FAQ’s | Basketball Australia

Just a special solo quick shot with Neil to run through the amazing schedule for the Upcoming National Coaches Conference which you can read about and sign up for here Schedule Announced for National Coaches Conference | Basketball Australia Coaching Resource . Neil also teases a big announcement for Community Coaches next Tuesday at midday, keep your eyes peeled!

Todays guest has more stamps in her passport than anyone we have ever had on the podcast before as Basketball has taken her all over the world! Priyanka Karunakaran is the Head of Operations for the Rollers, Gliders, Spinners, Devils and all National 3x3 teams! If that wasn’t enough in a normal year she is also working with a focus to the Paris Comm Games in 2024! There are so many different ways Pri has involvement with coaches and also a unique perspective across all the different formats of the game!

Second to their players, Coaches probably have the most communication with referees on game days, rightly or wrongly! So we thought it was important to get an insight into how that communication works from a referee's perspective, the challenges they have on the floor, how they review and improve and the age old art of communication. Neil is joined by Caitlin Grove, Technical Officials Development Officer from Basketball NSW. Caitlin has been a ref since she was 14 years old and is a familiar face at recent Footlocker National Championships.

If there was one mental skill set you would want a basketball player to have young or old, Resilience would be high up there.  Neil is joined by Martin Heppell from the world famous Resilience Project to talk about all his learnings working with young people about resilience, his experience both as a professional athlete, a parent and now someone working in the mental health space and finally perhaps the most passionate selection of a coach you would want to ask a question too on record!

Bec Allen has been a fan favorite all around the world in the WNBL, WNBA and Euro Basket! With her defensive ability and Sharp shooting skills it’s easy to see why she is often one that catches a watching coaches eye for ideas on how they can get their players to come close to replicating her talents. Neil and Bec get stuck into her philosophy on shooting, the coach who said it was defense or bench and plenty of chat about the importance of whats going on between the ears!

This weeks guest needs no introduction to the Basketball public in Australia! Opals captain, WNBL champion, role model for basketball fans everywhere, Tess Madgen. We are going to touch on her amazing playing career which still has lots of time to had to her accolades but what some people might not be aware of is the power of work that Tess is doing on the other side of the sidelines as a coach with the Melbourne Boomers academy and her She Hoops Masterclasses with Madgen. Tess discusses the coaches that shaped her career coming through, the battles with her brothers and what that taught her and the importance of the captain-coach relationship.