Developing a Youth Program with Jon Yu & Neil Houghton (Part 2)

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Hi and hello everyone. I want to give a brief introduction to this week's podcast. It's featuring Jonathan Yu and Neil Houghton. We recently got together to discuss Jonathan's new role as a technical director In Vietnam. And this is part 2 of that conversation.

I think that's the biggest thing for at least that small pocket, or our organization or whatever, is how can we get them having, just having a more enjoyable experience? Right. And then again, I mean, going back to the terms, but what are your thoughts on the terms?

Like, do you think, and I'm not sure if I have enough pull to even change that part of the organization, but would you think 3 months versus maybe 6 months getting them to commit versus a year or something? What do you think leaving it at 3 months, if in a perfect world and I got to at least put some thoughts about the organization maybe changing its approach a little bit, what are your thoughts on timeline or timescale, I guess?

Ideally, it's different than clubs. I don't know. We obviously all come from different places and Adam and I would, I would assume, probably be a little more on the same page in North America. But That you would kind of be with your club.

I don't know. I know we get kids changing clubs all the time and jumping around and playing for multiple clubs and things like that. And it's kind of the same in Vietnam now. There's a whole nother side where, and I don't know the full rules, but there's something called the Hong Luong players and the federation.

So the city federations can sign these players and they can give them, I guess, a stipend or whatever to train, but then they're kind of locked under these youth contracts. And so you can't play for certain clubs or in tournaments. And if you want to represent the province and things like that, you need to have signed a contract or something earlier.

I don't know how it all works, but it's trying to navigate also that situation as well, where some of the better players, they may be like, oh, I can come to practice. My federation allows me once a week, and I'm not allowed to play games.

Or— The federation needs me for these dates, and so you might have kids coming in and out of the your practices or your team. So there's a lot of moving parts I'm trying to figure out because culturally it's Vietnam's a I've never experienced anything like that in my life.

The way that things are run and the way things are done, and I'm not saying it's a bad or a good thing; it's just I'm still trying to figure it out.

I wonder, John, would would you describe like your future situation more like an academy than a club? Is that Would that be a better description of it? Because that would probably alter the approach you take, I guess.

Again, those top players, I would call that more of an academy because they have access. I think they do— it's like when you join that one, I think you get an extra day or 2 of practice. It's very calculated on how much court time you get, how much training, because again, the infrastructure and the resources are quite limited.

With 400 kids, I think our facility— well, we only have 2 courts. And so a lot of times you'll be running a full team practice and there's 4 teams on 2 courts, right? So you get your 1 basket in a half court. Some of these teams will have 15, 16 guys and it's like shared basketballs.

So it's like you may or may not, and it's open air gym. So these basketballs get beat, they're dribbled in water. It's like they're not the greatest. So I would say the older or the better players, I would consider that more so an academy.

And then for the 400 or so kids that are coming through that other youth program, I would look at that more as a club, like a recreational club.

A club? What about like a feeder program?

The feeder would be the top one. They call that Next Gen Heat. So that would be like even in their name of like the pro team is Saigon Heat. And so that feeder program and that academy program would be the best players coming from But again, you can try out from around the city, but a lot of the kids would be homegrown from that other club, chosen for Next Gen, and then they would train together, have access to better coaching, more resources, more tournaments.

Still not a ton of opportunity to play. Getting better from when I first saw a year and a half ago in Vietnam. They're starting to build more gyms and infrastructure around that. But I think that the 400 youth coming through that I would probably call that a club, like a recreational club team or club program, I guess.

Just getting kids in the door to play basketball, I guess. And that's kind of the grassroots problem of how can we retain, you know, grow the sport. It's interesting because like shooting is very low, very, very low. No baskets to shoot on. And so a lot of these kids, yeah.

And you look at the pro teams and the local guys and There's no disrespect, but it's just a product of the environment. We take it for granted. I don't know about you guys, but I grew up with a shooting machine and a gym anytime I kind of wanted, or most— if I wanted to wake up early or whatever, I had the opportunity.

But it's like once your hour and a half practice ends, there's another team coming on. And then at the end, there's probably bookings for adults trying to play too. So these kids will come to the gym and they're relegated to the ones that want to work.

They'll be doing dribbling on the side, stationary ball handling on the side, or just in a little patch of concrete they can find or whatever, right? But you won't— definitely won't have a basket to shoot on.

When you asked the question, you know, 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months before, it just seems to me that if you've got the next-gen group and the recreational club group, give it some thought and think, what would be my— the number one outcome for each of those 2 groups, or the top 3, or a very small number?

You know, what would be success for you in 3 months for the Next Gen Group? What would be the number one KPI for success for the recreational club? Because I think you might find different responses to those 2 questions. And then you can extend that to if it was 6 months or longer or whatever.

You might have a response now, you might not, it doesn't matter. But if you want to give that a go at the moment, you know, by all means, go for it.

Yeah, no, that's definitely got me thinking, like KPIs for Next gen, a lot of those kids, they want to be pros, right? So those guys are, and a lot of them are like, I can see them, especially with the way Vietnamese basketball is.

I can definitely see a lot of them kind of have that pathway of making it to the big clubs. So I guess that would be considered successful, I guess, is them playing university or professional. Some of the high schools, we have a couple of guys that are still in high school that have played professionally now.

They've joined the pro side and they're able to do both. And actually the team captain is actually playing in university as well right now. And so I don't know what their rules are around eligibility and things like that, but with Next Gen for sure, they're trying to get them to that next level.

With the other club, the KPIs would be, well, obviously you would want to try to figure out how to get some kids maybe that are late bloomers into Next Gen. We want to develop some kids. We don't want to just say, once you're chosen at 12, these are our guys.

We want to give opportunity for others to develop or late bloomers to come along. Again, KPI, again, retention. That was the one thing that I took from that meeting when I talked to the boss was he said, we have a very low retention rate.

And so especially with basketball, because basketball is not super popular, it's very niche. And so soccer is popular or football. I would say volleyball is probably even more popular. So retention rate, getting them to actually enjoy the game, and yeah, just inspiring them to keep playing.

I think that's the way that to— in order for them to grow. When I first started talking to them, they talked about how in their development program and how they approach it, like, or their teams and stuff, they go to Southeast Asian games, so they go to SEA Games, and they beat the same teams, but then they get stomped by the same teams.

So they're somewhere in the middle of the pack. And so that's why I kind of first initially wanted to go there was because they're like, we need to figure out a way to try to do something a little bit differently. Because we've been having the same results against the same countries.

And so we want to grow the game. We want it to become more popular. And it's beginning to. It's only been popular, I would guess, for maybe 10 years or even growing for the last 10 years. So even the way the game is played, it's played like the '90s.

It's like 2 bigs shoot midrange, very slow. And the bigs are like not bigs.

They're just Bigs, right?

So it's a different play style where the most— I don't know, I personally think the most fun way to play is fast, fast and free.

I've been thinking about like the youth level just because as soon as I hear you talking and you're explaining the resources and like a KPI for me, it's not easily measured. But well, I guess this could be like an intention behind a lot of the practice design would be increased number of touches.

Because if it's difficult and you're on that one hoop with like 16 kids, We have to figure out ways and activities that get them to touch the basketball. Because if they're not touching the basketball, it's going to be very— just watch any youth game here in North America, and I'm sure it's the same in Australia.

What do they do? They hover around the basketball. Why? Because they want to build a relationship with the basketball. It's the main— it's the center of the sport. And if you're not touching that basketball, who'd want to keep playing, especially at that youth level?

So figuring out activities and strategies to get touches throughout practice as much as possible, I think, would be huge for retention.

Love that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, increased touches, increased decisions, right? Just more opportunities to interact with the game and the experience of that whole thing. I love that. I love everything you guys say. You guys are like my 2 favorite guys to learn from.

I think, um, I mean, listening to that, it's like I just jotted some notes down here. It's like you probably can't see it, my screen's not too good, I suppose. Look, where's— can you see that or not?

Retention.

So that says repetition at the top. Then I said, what are the things we have to do? So it says here, retention requires— I had 1, enjoyment, 2, inspiration, 3, difference. There'll be something different about what you'll be doing. I wrote down the fast and free.

That seemed to capture something there as well. So if that's like one of the big questions that is being asked of you, John, how do you increase retention? Then This captures what's going to be different about your approach compared to the way it has been.

So there's some examples, and you might have other ones or whatever. And then I think that first KPI that you added, Adam, increase the number of touches, that's absolutely brilliant because that's right on. Okay, so, and that's why you're doing CLA, that's why you're doing small-sided games, so you can increase the number of touches so they can have more enjoyment, they can be inspired more.

They'll actually experience the difference. They can then pass play faster and freer. And I had my KPIs: 1, 2, 3. I've got nothing for 2 and 3 yet, but that seems to be a way to frame the problem and the approach that could build a solution pathway.

I agree. No, it's again, those 4— it's enjoyment, inspiration, difference, like the difference of what we're doing fast and free. It's like, again, that sums up everything that, like, if you could just apply that across the whole program, If you can just increase that without having to do it, then you hit a magic button.

Wouldn't everyone want to join that program? Wouldn't everyone want to play? And I think that it goes obviously with transformational positive coaching, it goes hand in hand, right? Especially when I was leaving Vietnam, I didn't expect the reception of people like, it's not the same without you leading our session or whatever.

Some of the players would message me. And I guess once they kind of saw a different approach, they really, really bought into it and they really enjoyed that experience. And yeah, if we can get at least a coach even just trying something different to, again, at the end of the day, increase enjoyment, number one, that would lead to a way better retention.

You look at some of those kids that come in for the hour and a half and I've seen like one hoop would have 30 kids one time and it's like, how are you having fun? It's like this and the way that The way that practices are run or whatever.

It's a lot of standing, a lot of lines.

I think that links back to some of the very first things you said, John, about, you know, when you described part of the challenge. You mentioned the low retention, but you also said, um, you used class. So did the players experience this like another school class?

So that's part of the difference, I think, here. It will not be like another school class. Rather, it's like this. So I think that's showing—

Reframing that.

Reframing that. Yeah, that's exactly— yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's language. Simple, right? But it's the language of it. And when I first heard them say it, they're like, oh yeah, like, I can't make it to class today, or I'll be late to class today. And they call me teacher. And I'm like, I don't need a title.

Like, you can call me John. I really don't care. But I don't like the formality. I never dress up. I don't ever dress up for anything. I'm in a hoodie, I'm in whatever, right? Like, I'm not— so I want them to approach it not the exact same way, but again, less formal.

Like, don't worry about— let's just go play. Let's go have fun. Like, let's find joy in this environment. Definitely, that's the number one intention, right, for all of this, is how can we make it more fun? I'm trying to think of another— KPIs.

Like, I'm going back to KPIs and going back even for Because obviously with 400 kids and potentially not a lot of court time, increase the number of touches. So now I'm trying to think of activities, I guess, like 3-on-3-on-3s or 4-on-4-on-4s, or I guess depending on numbers and what we can do with that.

It's definitely got me thinking. How would you approach, I guess, like, how would you, besides just like obviously getting them to play more in practice, what are your thoughts on, and I don't know, this is an organizational thing, but I think I might have the opportunity to Hopefully try to schedule games, or at least schedule more, or at least try to voice my opinion that we need more opportunities to play.

Again, I have no experience scheduling. I have no experience reaching out and trying to figure out how to run tournaments or play days or anything like that. Are there any KPIs that you would have in terms of running maybe a tournament, and you would say that this is something that really helped build excitement in this tournament or in this day of games?

Because what I've seen when they run these kind of play days or jamborees, it's very— there's like speeches and things that like, there's a lot of stuff that for the kids is like, they don't care about that. They don't care about someone standing at the front where we all line up and they have this big banner out and we're wasting time here.

Like, let's get them playing. I'm just thinking about like KPIs in terms of running a tournament or a jamboree or, or something like that. How can I ensure that they're getting the most out of that? from someone that has no experience in scheduling?

And what helped, I guess, for you guys? I don't know if you guys have a lot of experience doing that, but what lessons have you learned if you've organized your own things? What are some mistakes that you might have made early on when trying to build out scheduling or tournaments and stuff like that?

Have you done something like that, Adam? Maybe was it with College Prep or London Lions, or was that sort of similar to what John's asking there, do you think?

No, not really. Like, for what I can speak on is like running AAU tournaments and like summer leagues. And the big thing there is just not having any lag time in between and just really transitioning from game to game as fast as possible and like having those teams ready and you don't want people lingering and stuff like that.

That's the only thing I really know as far as about scheduling and all that stuff. So just—

Yeah.

Being very cognizant.

How much warm-up time would you give them roughly then, would you say?

Oh, minimal, minimal. We're talking like 5 minutes max, especially the age group you're talking about.

I mean, right, they can just go out, they can go play, they can just go out and hoop. Yeah. Would you— like, my dream of running a youth development league is like everyone has to full-court press the whole game. And it's like, I want— especially because like, I don't know, A lot of teams will fall into zone at super young ages.

And so like, I want to ban zone, which is— that's possible, but it's like, I want kids to develop. This is— I don't know if I'd even be able to do this, but it's something that I've thought about. What happens if you just make every team— you got to get up, every team has to get up.

I just like the idea of everyone having to learn how to guard.

Well, that's certainly foreseeable. Actually, I'll point you to a guy I had on the podcast recently, Sean Keating. He has, I think it was 4th and 5th graders. So we're talking what? 9, 10, and 11-year-olds. And it's a 4-on-3, 3-on-2 league. And he scaled it based off certain levels.

They actually— it's not a press, so it's purely transition. You're obviously just going from shot to shot, and then you just run out of bounds and go back to the other end, get back in line, and you do it for 4 quarters. So one session you're going 4-on-3, that's your group, and then you're having the 2 defenders.

And then obviously you switch, you alternate each. That way you have 2 goes at each. But I think what's encouraging is just the number of touches. They're getting up and down and they have an advantage.

Mm-hmm.

So they don't have to create that advantage. And what he also did further down the line was actually, you, you don't press, you actually can't even guard outside of the 3. You have to be inside the 3. And he took away reaching on the ball because that's a big struggle obviously with that age group as well, is they're not exactly super comfortable with handling, especially when it comes to pivoting.

That defender has such a huge advantage at that age level where they can just rip the ball away from him.

I haven't listened to this episode yet. So how did he get them to not reach? Or how did he—

Yeah, they have one approach that they have one official, and they just established that they showed them beforehand, like, hey, this is what we can and cannot do on the basketball. And then they refereed it out from there.

I like that.

I think that that's like you've got a transition tournament.

Yep, that's what it was. Yeah.

Yeah, that's different. And now the constraints there really assist with, you know, the more touches and fast and playing fast up and down the floor. Just recently here, we've just finished what's called the Victorian Primary School Championships. So these are young kids in 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade.

And like, there's hundreds and hundreds of primary schools that enter the competition, and there's filtering as teams win, and we finally get to the top 20 teams that came to finals. That happened a couple of weeks— weekends ago. But I think what was good there was there were only 2 halves, and they were 7-minute halves.

That was it. And it was like a 2-minute warm-up. So quick warm-up, 7 minutes, 7 minutes, then they had a rest for about 30 minutes, then the next game. So you had all of these players in the stadium being really active, knowing that their next game is coming very soon as well.

So, you know, the next activity is, is always there for them. So, but Pretty simple approach, but it was like that tournament concept that you're talking about, John. Huge amount of fun. There were no other constraints on the game in terms of whether it's 4-on-3 or transition like that.

But it still would have been— must be man-to-man because that's just the rules here in our state. You could try it with the version that Adam described there. You could try it with a version of full-court press and see what happens. Maybe for one quarter, it's full-court press.

The other one quarter's 4-on-3 transition into 3-on-2, you know, another quarter's always inside the 3-point line or something like that. So different situations across the 4 quarters in that rapid environment where things are continually happening for the players.

That's awesome. That's got me thinking. It's kind of like, it makes me think of like, like a 3x3 event. And I don't know about Australia and America, but like 3x3 is not that big in Canada. Like I had no experience with 3x3 until I went to Vietnam and I saw it.

3x3 might sometimes be bigger than 5-on-5 in Asia just because of space, right? And that just makes me think of 3x3 or even playing rugby sevens, right? And just how quick, you know, you said 2 7-minute halves, you're playing 30 minutes later, like it's super quick.

How big were the rosters for that in the 7-minute halves? Like, are they running full 10, 12 kids, or is it—

Most of the teams had either 7 or 8 players.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. I like that. And I definitely need to listen to this 4-on-3, 3-on-2 podcast after with Adam. So, but I like that. I like the full of it because essentially, like you guys said, you're playing transition the whole time.

And so I like, because at the end of the day, they're going to be, they're playing and they're not going to be like, oh, what do you mean? It's, why aren't we playing 5-on-5? I feel like I'd be able to create buy-in from that just based on, hey, you're going to have fun.

You're going to be playing fast. You're gonna get a bunch of touches, you're gonna be coming in and out super quick, so you gotta stay locked in and ready to go. Right, stay present here. And I like that, and I think I can create buy-in with that.

So that's definitely got me thinking pretty, pretty good right now.

Yeah, that's good, John.

Any more thoughts that you guys have though? This has been awesome. I have like a ton of stuff I need to write down and sort out now in my brain. It's all over the place right now, but this was awesome. Nothing else?

Keep us in the loop, like, as far as, like, once you find out more details, it'll be super.

Yeah, I'm literally waiting. I'm waiting for the boss to get back to me and try to sort this out because I'm heading there in, like, 2 weeks. So, and you need a visa to get in there. So I'm hoping that he gets back to me soon and so we can get my visa sorted.

But no, this, again, after talking with Neil last time as well, just, it fires me up to get back out there and actually try to make a difference, right? And try to help grow the game as best I can. So I appreciate both of you guys.

Just freestyling and sharing thoughts that are coming in. I got a couple pages of notes, so that's— I'm gonna spend this week sorting out. I work at the Children's Hospital graveyard shift this week. I do like internal call center operator. So like when nurses need a room clean, they call me and then I just dispatch.

It's like I'm playing a video game. Like I dispatch the housekeepers out and they go take care of business. So it gives me a lot of time to work on basketball stuff because graveyard, not a lot's going on. So I'm gonna be spending the next— this whole week going through all this and Trying to think about how best to approach it.

So thank you guys. Thank you guys for all the knowledge. And like I said, you guys are some of my favorite guys to learn from. So thank you both for your time. This was awesome.

Thank you, John.

Absolutely.

I wouldn't have thought of without you.

So it's cool.

Awesome. That's right. It just comes up in conversation, doesn't it?

So fun. So fun to learn from you guys.

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