USA Trip - Part 4 - Fort Worth to Waco to Austin

Early in the planning stage Julia had checked Baylor University fixtures in the hope of attending one of their games and she thought that they were playing on the 11th of November which we could have fitted in nicely. We had hoped to see Baylor because Tenya’s son Tommy had played for them and it would have been nice to see their set-up. Nearer our traveling time we looked up their fixture list again and found that we had misread the dates as the US way is to put the month before the day, and we could not fit in a game due to other commitments.
Rather than give up entirely I had emailed the coach and asked if we could watch a practice, he had replied saying no problem but he had not got back to us with date and time etc. Since Waco was on the way to Austin we decided to chance looking in. We arrived at the University information office and quickly got directions to the basketball centre. We arrived at about 3.15 and wandered into the impressive building. It was looking promising as there were basketball players wandering around, outside the locker room we passed a coach, whistle round neck, clipboard in hand. I introduced us to him and asked if we could watch practice. He ushered us into the gym that he was heading for and allowed us to watch. There were 12 or 13 players, mainly identifiable by their picture hanging from the rafters above us, but more surprisingly, there were at least as many coaches, graduate players and general support staff.
The warm-up was much as we have seen often over here but then the practice started and immediately we noted that the game clock was running for each drill. The number of staff was such that every pair of players shooting had someone with them who counted their baskets and made sure they were declaring the correct score. While things went on it became clear that the head coach was away but the practice was being videoed so that he could watch it later. It was notable that the acting head-coach ran the practice using a printed lesson plan and all the various assistants had a copy of that plan to know what was coming next. While we sat at the end of the gym, players and staff came over to us, introduced themselves and made us generally welcome. As the session progressed it became clear that there was a long term commitment involved, there was a Baylor way to do things and the senior players were partly responsible for cascading that way down to the less experienced players. It became particularly interesting to us when the players were split into two teams the, Green and Gold, and the practice became focused on the next game’s opponents. Both teams were briefed on the opponent’s usual defenses and offences and expected to put them into their game play. Over the next twenty minutes the coaches were very prepared to interrupt the game-play and correct the errors – players who made errors were made to run, and if a team committed a turnover they all ran. The structure was impressive but for the final session of the practice the two teams played each other with no conditions on the play. At this point we were disappointed to see that the majority of the plays consisted of the point guard bringing the ball down court and shooting it without it going through anyone else’s hands. The coaches tolerated this and the session finished with 7 minutes in which every player had to make ten free throws in a row – the only one who failed had to run!
The whole experience made us realize how hospitable the Texan’s tended to be and in contrast we wondered if someone wandered into a Derby Training session and asked to watch would they receive the same treatment?
After a few goodbyes we ;left the basketball centre and decided to get to Austin that evening so that we could have a quiet day to ourselves the next day before meeting up with friends for a meal in the evening.