Francois Lubino

I’m from France and coach at Basket Club Piegros in south-eastern France.

I'm the father of three girls aged 9, 15 and 17. My first experience as a “coach” began 10 years ago. My oldest daughter was 7, and wanted to play basketball after seeing “Space Jam” with Michael Jordan. Of course I couldn't say no. It pushed me back into the game, after I had stopped playing after the end of my studies.

I brought her to the local club and stayed until the end of the practice. The club needed some volunteers and I said “OK, I’ve never coached but I can support all you need!” I did this for three years, coaching in a very traditional way. I coached how I had been coached, working on fundamentals, the same on-air repetitions, form shooting drills etc.

Two years ago, a surgery on my hand made me stop working for 5 months. At the same time, my last daughter, 7 years old at the time, started her second year in the U9 team. And once again as my club needed some volunteers and I had a lot of free time, I jumped back into coaching. But this time it was different: as a physical therapist, between these two periods of coaching, I improved my knowledge about movement and how we develop our capacity to move. So I looked for a basketball approach with these ideas. And the website is amazing for this! This was how I found Alex Sarama.

The Transforming website and membership community. This has been invaluable because the other coaches at my club didn't understand this approach. I shared videos, papers, studies, Transforming social media content etc. But I felt alone with much of this! It’s hard to be different and challenge the status quo.

Parents, clubs and even players want immediate results. As a coach, and more than that, as an educator, I had to explain my pedagogy and my view of youth development. It is not about losses or wins, but about player development and pleasure, especially at this age.

Transforming has been an integral part of all of this, and I want to thank Alex Sarama. You sometimes meet people that can deeply change the direction of your life and give you the opportunity to explore a part of yourself you never thought possible. Alex is one of those people for me. Coaching was not the plan, but he opened his doors to me, and a new opportunity appeared.

And I met a lot of great people through my “Transforming” journey. One of my highlights was the Roseto Summer Camp.

Since I started implementing these ideas with my U9 and U11; I discovered new concepts and vocabulary such as the “constraints-led approach (CLA)”, “repetition without repetition”, “an ecological dynamics framework”, “affordances”, “dominoes”, “differential learning”, “nonlinear pedagogy”. I can say that I gave it my all to jump deep into this approach. Maybe because of my background with my job as a physical therapist, it was easier to transition into this “new way” and leave the traditional style behind.

I’m not sure I needed it, but I was definitely convinced when I met and assisted at a camp delivered by Alex Sarama in Italy in July 2023. I contacted Alex through social media and made the drive across the alps from France to Italy to see Alex in-action. This was such a great opportunity for me to go directly to the source! Alex is such a great person; humble, open-minded and sharing his work and experience with everyone that is interested in developing themselves to be an athlete-centered coach.

After this camp, I decided for the 2023-2024 season to go “all-in” with the Transforming Basketball approach with my U9 and U11’s. What have the results been? With my U9s, most of whom were brand new to basketball, I can say that they play quite well! Not “just” about winning, but about their attitude and intentions. The club’s senior coach took the U9 boys for a game and was surprised how they dribbled with their head ups! I never have to tell them this in practice because we simply play tag and dribble games which allow this to emerge.

With my U11’s, most of them were beginners. I had a mixed team, and we played against a lot of all-boys teams. At first, the girls on the team were afraid to play against boys, resulting in being shy on the court. We lost games by between 15-40 points. In the last games of the season, the same games we won by 15- 25 points! What I enjoyed most was not the wins, but how they improved their game on the court and maintained their sense of joy and fun even durings the losses.