Playing Time
The minimum playing time is 25% for all teams except our ZGXL and varsity teams. A good rule is to get all kids in by the 10-minute mark, 8:00 the latest and if you can, get them two rotations, even if the 2nd rotation is not long at all. That allows you to have your best 5 players on the floor for the last 3:00-4:00 minutes as well. It is also good practice to have every player get a break every half, even if it is just for 1:00-2:00 minutes. Some coaches like to sub 5 in, 5 out when they have 10 or 11 players, so for the most part, players play evenly. This is not a good subbing pattern!
There are many issues with playing everyone equally every game, including:
1. The players that benefit from that form of subbing are the weaker players. That frustrates the stronger players and most of the time, they leave us and the weaker players return. We want everyone to return so we can help them develop and be the best players that they can be.
2. Often when coaches break players into 2 groups of 5, they divide them equally. When you do this, the best players never play together so you never have your best 5 on the floor at the same time.
3. This form of subbing and playing time will definitely affect wins and losses. Winning isn’t our #1 goal, but when parents see us losing games we can and should be winning, that becomes an issue. We definitely want to win all of the games we should be winning!
There are times when 5-5 subbing is OK.
1. I know many coaches do this the first tournament and sometimes the second to learn their players and rotations. If you choose to do this, I would recommend only doing this for the first tournament. After that, please do not continue with 5-5 subbing.
2. If you know you are going to win a game very easily and want to do that, that is OK. Generally, it is something you do late in the first half or in the second half once you have built a lead. In that situation, I would say once you were up a lot of points, I would play the weaker players who play the least number of minutes the remaining time. There is no reason to have better players in a game when it is 20-25+ points either way. This also has the benefit when you play the weaker kids in a lopsided game that they can play the minimum the next game but still have played a good number of minutes for the day.
In conclusion, your best players should play much more than your weaker players and should be in together as well.
Rotation guides: Can be downloaded/printed/edited