Youth-Athlete's Sport Blog

Marc Dagenais just released a new DVD for Dynamic Warm-Up for Softball System.  Discover how to simultaneously increase speed, power, agility, and flexibility.  Prepare for superior performances and prevent injuries all in just a couple of minutes while warming-up.  By using the same dynamic warm-up exercises that Olympic softball athletes use to prepare themselves to dominate on the softball field and achieve extraordinary performances.  More...

Many athletes warm up either through static stretching or just starting to play.  Warming up by going straight into practice or a game is just a great way to get injured.  The traditional static warm-up stretches relax the muscles and cool down the core body temperature.  Energize the muscles and improve your range of motion with dynamic stretching during the warm-up process that will begin your body's transition from being at rest to a highly activated neuromuscular state and prepare you for peak performance. More...

On the exciting day that ESPN kick-off their 2008 college basketball coverage, the legendary basketball coach Pete Newell passed away at the age of 93.  Pete is a basketball coaching legend being the first of three coaches to coach the winning teams of a NCAA championship (1959), NIT championship (1949), and Olympic Gold Medal (1960) (the other two are Bobby Knight and Dean Smith).  More...

Coach Candrea and Team USA work with SportSkool to teach the softball fundamentals of base running.   Team USA coach Mike Candrea and Amanda Freed cover the art of pitching.  Amanda Freed shows the proper upper and lower body mechanics and the grips to throw a fastball, change-up, drop ball, and rise ball.   More...

On any given day, any team or anyone can win the game.  This is what makes competitive sports so much fun.  You never know when a player or team outmatched in every aspect of the game pulls off the victory by stunning their opponent.  Take a lesson from Michael Jordan. More...

In my previous post, Basketball Strategies 101, I provided a simple metric to measure the effectiveness of a team's offensive and defensive strategies.  In this post, I want to describe Dean Smith's more sophisticated offense and defense measure that he called possession evaluation.  This metric is described in detail with several examples in his book, Multiple Offense and Defense.  This book is a must read for any basketball coach or player who wants to understand and teach the fundamentals of basketball.  More...

Basketball often times is considered a simple game with the winning team having a higher score after competing for a pre-defined amount of time.  But what is often missed are the underlying offensive and defensive strategies and, most importantly, how to judge their effectiveness.  More...

Coach Candrea and Tairia Flowers work with SportSkool to teach the proper softball catching mechanics.  They show the mechanics required for a proper stance, glove work and framing, throwing, fielding bunts, and receiving throws.  More...