Frankie Rios is one of the most talented, athletic young players in the area. I’ve been working with Frankie for over 2 months now and he has taken tremendous strides. He has great natural athletic ability (he’s an outstanding football player as well, pointing out to me today that he scored 2 touchdowns in a 32-0 win!!!!), yet we’ve had to work quite a bit on specific skills. He is a good shooter but sometimes his release is a tad slow. When you’re in 8th grade, that can work. But as I continue to stress to Frankie (tired of hearing it yet?!?!) once he gets to the next level, that split second will make all the difference. So amongst many other drills we did today, we did some stationary catch and shoot (see video). Hands ready, knees bent, catch, do NOT bring the ball down, and shoot. As you can see, Frankie did pretty well in this sequence. Here’s a couple of points… Frankie is used to bringing the ball down when he shoots, in order to gain more power in his shot. Like I just mentioned, bringing the ball down loses that split second. Frankie has also learned that power comes from his legs. So in this drill, he was to not bring the ball down, yet shoot right from the catch. As you can clearly see, when he used his legs and his follow through well to get the ball up in the air with some good parabola (fantastic word), the ball went in. When he didn’t, he pulled it short. Linedrive = miss… Arc= make.
Great job Frankie!!!!