Blog 22: Senior Project Presentation

(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your Block Presentation and/or your senior project? Why?

I am most proud of being able to play varsity basketball. It is one of the things I thought I would not be able to do while going to iPoly. Playing basketball is very important to me an I wanted to be active in the sport while doing my Senior Project and this is why I chose it as my senior topic.

(2) Questions to Consider

a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Block Presentation (self-assessment)?

I would give myself a P.

b.     What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project (self-assessment)?

I would give myself a P.

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?

The things that worked were being able to go to Southlands Christian and do my mentorship. Being able to go to practice and work on my own basketball skills and become better as a team is satisfaction enough of being able to play basketball. I enjoyed being to go there and work with my mentor, Will Robbins, and try to work towards the goal of winning a league championship.

(4) (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would have you done differently to improve your senior project if you could go back in time?

The only thing that I would fix is trying to do everything on time. For example, the thing I would tell myself to do is log my hours as soon as I could instead of trying to remember everything at once.

(5) Finding Value

How has the senior project been helpful to you in your future endeavors?   Be specific and use examples.

The Senior Project has been helpful by showing me new skills that I may be able to use in the future. I have learned various skills such as meeting people to get a certain jon done. I believe these skills will help me in the future and possibly lead me to great outcomes.

Blog 21: Mentorship

Literal

·     Log of specific hours with a total and a description of your duties updated on the right hand side of your blog

• Done

·     Contact Name and Mentorship Place

• Will Robbins, Southlands Christian High School

Interpretive

     What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

• The most important thing I gained from this experience is figuring out what a basketball coach actually has to do to prepare his team for the challenge ahead. I saw the different obstacles a basketball coach had to overcome so that he is able to have his team ready for whatever challenge that may come ahead. I saw that being a coach isn't always easy and the different hardships that come with coaching a basketball team.

Applied

     How has what you’ve done helped you to answer your EQ?  Please explain.

• Going to Southlands Christian and observing what my mentor/ coach, Will Robbins, does there has helped me answer my EQ by seeing what a coach does to help his team get better every time during practice. At my mentorship, I saw how my coach/ mentor incorporated different drills that went with what we were going to do or who we were going to face later while these drills helped us get better individually as players.

Basketball At The Park

With the Southlands Christian season being over, I have not had the opportunity to play any kind of organized basketball that I would usually do in the offseason. All the leagues that I usually had been in ,before playing at Southlands Christian, were all full and I had no idea how I was going to play organized basketball again.

After realizing this, I just though about going to the local park and just shooting around. For me, just being able to shoot a basketball into a hoop is satisfaction enough for having the need to play basketball. So, what I did was go to the park every morning during spring break and shoot the basketball. I was able to do this because I would be dropping off my sister at school which meant that I had to wake up early. When I dropped her off, I went to a park in Walnut where I would just be shooting by myself working on my mechanics and getting a good rhythm in hopes that this would benefit me if I were to play again somewhere else. I would go there and play for about an hour and a half to two hours.

The park I went to is called Butterfield Park in Walnut.

Blog 20: Exit Interview

1. What is your essential question and answers? What is your best answer and why?

How can a coach best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship?

3 Answers:

• A coach can best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship by teaching the fundamentals as a part of every practice.
• A coach can best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship by incorporating drills that involve teamwork.
• A coach can best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship by using the correct coaching strategies in certain game situations.

Best Answer: 

• My best answer is that a coach can best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship by teaching the fundamentals as a part of every practice. Teaching players the fundamentals and having them learn them is a very important part of playing basketball with them being the essential part of having a basketball be as successful it can be. The fundamentals are what players always learn first and they have to be able to be experts in these skills so that their team can have a better chance of winning a league championship.

2. What process did you take to arrive there?

• The process I took was through research and doing my mentorship/ independent component. I saw that everywhere I looked, it always came back to the fundamentals of basketball. While doing research, I saw that a main thing most article I looked at went back to teaching and learning the fundamentals. While doing mentorship and my independent component, I saw that my coach and mentor, Coach Will Robbins of Southlands Christian High School, always put in drills during practice that had us working the fundamentals so that we may be able to learn and develop with these principle skills.

3. What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?

• Some problems I faced were trying to find a perfect Answer 2 and creating a good essential question. With Answer 2, I wanted to get the key factor of teamwork as my answer but didn't know how to come up with a perfect thesis statement for that. As I kept researching, I saw that it had to be in a place where it was in practice and I saw an answer where teamwork can be incorporated during practice. As with the EQ, at first my EQ had nothing to do with what I was researching and my mentorship. As time went on, I had came up and formulated an EQ that went well with what I was doing for my project.

4. What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

• My two most significant sources are my mentor/ coach Coach Will Robbins of Southlands Christian High School and a website called Breakthrough Basketball. My mentor has showed me everything that I hadn't known about basketball prior to this project and he has a vast knowledge about the sport of basketball. The website of Breakthrough Basketball has many resources that tied in with all my answers. It showed how to teach the fundamentals, how to incorporate and teach teamwork chemistry, and different ways to coach a basketball team in certain situations. This source showed me many things that gave me resources for playing and coaching the sport of basketball.

Blog 19: Independent Component 2

LITERAL: 

(a) Statement saying: “I, student name, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”

• I, Leo Larino, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work

(b) Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component

• The source that helped me the most complete my independent component would have to be Coach Mike Acuna of Southlands Christian. He is the assistant coach of the basketball team at Southlands Christian and he is the one who really watched as I coached some of the players on the team. He showed me how to teach some of the players and I learned what a coach should do in certain situations.

(c) Provide a digital spreadsheet (aka log of the 30 hours).   Post it next to your mentorship log

• Done.

(d) Explanation of what you completed.    

• What I did for my independent component is help coach the Southlands Christian basketball team as they trained in the Spring. My initial job was to help get the team ready for their Spring League at Rowland High School, but there had not been enough players who had wanted to join. So, I just had coached the people who were ready to go for the Spring and all the players who wanted to get better for next season. I did hands-on coaching where I was able to teach players the correct thing to do when in a basketball game and had them do drills where they would get better as a basketball player. I went by the practice schedule Coach Mike had gotten ready each day and went on to help coach the team. 

 INTERPRETIVE:

• These pictures show some of the drills the players had to do while in practice.

APPLIED:

How did the component help you answer your EQ? Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped. 

• This component helped me answer my EQ by showing what a coach actually has to do to get his team ready for the challenge ahead, and that is winning basketball games. A coach has to do many things so that his players are ready to play in the game and execute what they have been taught in practice. This all starts by having a perfect practice and by having players who are there that want to get better. For example, we did not have many players coming to practice at one point and Coach Mike saw that as a big problem. So, I saw that I had say something so that we could have this Spring Training as something that would be very beneficial for the players returning. I saw that we needed players who wanted to play to get better and I wanted to have the players come to practice. I scolded some of the people I saw and told them to go so that they could get ready for next season. A coach has to be able to handle tough situations with his team and this could be one of those situations. This can tie into what my EQ is and show how a coach can maximize his team;s chances if winning a league championship.

Spring Training

For my independent component 2, I chose to help coach the Southlands Christian basketball team where I help out my mentor, Coach Will, and the assistant coach Coach Mike with all the practices. They have practice during this time when the season had just ended so that the upcoming players and returning players are able to get ready for next season. Coach Will also has the team in a spring league tournament a Rowland High School where they will play other teams that are much above the team in division. This gives the team a chance to get better with basketball being able to be in effect the whole year until they come back in the fall and to get better as basketball players.

Here are some of the things that we do at practice.

Practicing dribbling.

Practicing passing.

Blog 18: Third Answer

EQ: How can a coach best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship?

Answer #3: A coach can best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship by using the best coaching strategies in certain situations.

• A coach has to use the correct coaching strategies when in certain game situations.                     Ex: A coach has to know what to do when in a situation such as a late game where his team could be up or down when the game is on the line. Source: 20

• A coach has to use the right kind of plays when he sees what the other team is playing.                 Ex: A coach has to see what kind of offense to run when the other team could be playing a zone defense or a man to man defense. Source: 21

• A coach has to know how to motivate his team when they are losing or to let them know that they cannot lose the game.                                                                                                                Ex: A coach has to let his team know that they are about to lose the game and has to emphasize that they have to come back and win. Source: Mentorship, 23

A coach can best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship if he knows what coaching strategies/ plays to use in certain situations.

Blog 17: Fourth Interview

1. What is most important when teaching the fundamentals of basketball?

2. Why should a coach teach the fundamentals to players if they already know these techniques?

3. What is most important while teaching defense?

4. What is most important while teaching players how to correctly use offensive moves?

5. Why should the fundamentals of basketball always be taught during practice?

6. How should defense be taught?

7. How can a coach get his players to play better together?

8. What is most important when talking about teamwork?

9. Why is it important to emphasize teamwork within players?

10. How should a coach strategize before a game?

11. What should a coach do and think in late game situations?

12. How does a coach read a certain defense or offense?

13. How does a coach choose what defense or offense to run during a game?

14. How should a coach talk to his team after a game?

15. How do you incorporate the fundamentals during practice?

16. How does a coach come up with certain offenses and defenses for his team?

17. How does a coach implement teamwork within his players during practice?

18. What main goal should a coach have when trying to have more teamwork with his team?

19. What goal should a coach have when teaching the fundamentals?

20. What are the universal coaching strategies that all coaches use?

SCS vs. Sheperds Grove

The Southlands team had a game after coming off a loss against TVT. If we had won the game against TVT, our team would have had the chance of becoming league champions. My coach and mentor, Coach Will, wanted us to go strong against our next opponent which was Sheperds Grove. He wanted to respond to the loss that we had just received and show that we were able to play like champions.

In this game against Sheperds Grove, we had gotten to a great start to where the score was 29 to 4 in the first quarter. Before the game, Coach Will had set goals for us which were no points, no fouls, and no turnovers. We had kept this in our mind and tried to play that way throughout the whole game. In the end we had ended up winning this game with a score of 65 to 41.

Below is some footage of the game during the first half.

Blog 16: Advisory Meeting #2

Answer #2:

A coach can best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship by emphasizing teamwork within his players.

Detail 1: Emphasizing teamwork can cause a coach's team to know how to play better together as a team.
Ex. A team that plays better together will be able to win more basketball games rather than a team who does not like playing together.

Detail 2: Showing teamwork within a team can have players realize that the team goal is bigger than that of the individual's.
Ex. A person's individual goal can be in the way of what the team is trying to do and that can be an obstacle when trying to win basketball games.

Detail 3: Having teamwork within a team can lead to everybody contributing their best ability to the team and contributing in the best way possible.
Ex. A coach may be able to see that all players cannot succeed in every area they play in, so he puts in players that can do well in certain areas (defense, rebounding, shooting, etc.). While doing this, his team is able to work well together and succeed in their certain area.

Resources: John Maxwell's 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork
Joe Haefner: The Ultimate Guide to Motivating Players - 36 Ways to Keep Your Players Focused and Working Hard ALL Season Long!

Concluding Sentence: A team that has teamwork within its players has a better chance of winning basketball games and winning a league championship.

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.

I plan to try to help coach a high school basketball team to see what a coach has to do when trying to think of strategies or when being in late game situations so I understand what they have to go through.

2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.

I will use pictures and videos to document what I have been doing for this 30 hours and to show that I am actually doing my 30 hours of work.

3.  And explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.

I will be exploring what coaches have to do in order to prep their team to win games and to become better as basketball players.

4.  Post a log on the right hand side of your blog near your other logs and call it the independent component 2 log.

Blog 13: Lesson 2 Reflection

Content:

1. Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your Lesson 2 Presentation and why?

I am most proud of my activity because it is one of the very few that had the audience go outside and do some of the physical work that involves my topic. The audience was able to learn some drills that come with learning the fundamentals of basketball.

2. Questions to Consider
       a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Lesson 2 Presentation (self-assessment)?

       AE       P          AP       CR       NC

P

       b.     Explain why you deserve that grade using evidence from the Lesson 2 component contract.

I met all the requirements (met talking time, activity time, intro conclusion) and I though that my presentation went well with me knowing what my topic was, knowing how to explaining my answer, having the audience get a visual of what playing basketball is like, and  showing that I am able to present on my topic.

3. What worked for you in your Lesson 2?

Being able to show the audience an answer for my topic.

4.  (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would you have done differently to improve your Lesson 2?

Get more time for doing my planned activity.

5. Finding Value
What do you think your answer #2 is going to be? 

A coach can best maximize his team;s chances of winning a league championship by having good teamwork from his players or having the best coaching strategies for certain situations.

Blog 14: Independent Component 1

LITERAL
(a) “I, Leonardo Larino, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”

(b) Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component.

My most important source in regards to who helped me complete the independent component would go to my mentor and coach, Coach Will. He is the one who guided me through playing basketball at Southlands and was the one that gave most of the new knowledge that I gained about the sport of basketball and coaching basketball.

(c) Provide a digital spreadsheet (aka log of the 30 hours).   Post it next to your mentorship log.

(d) Explanation of what you completed.    

The hours I completed show the time I have spent playing basketball for Southlands Christian School. The hours show all the practices and games played that I have attended played to become better as a basketball player. I have seen what kind of experience high school basketball players go through and had a perspective of the duties a coach has with his team. 

INTERPRETIVE
Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work.  

(skip to 21 seconds)

APPLIED
How did the component help you understand the foundation of your topic better?  Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped.

This component helped me understand the foundation of my topic by showing me the key factors that make up a good, winning basketball team. I saw how our team was winning many games, which came from having a team with players that know their fundamental skills and that are able to work together with the teamwork that they have. With the teamwork the team had, we were able to win the games that we could.

Basketball Camp

In the beginning of January, the Southlands basketball team had its first basketball camp in the mountains. This is the first time Coach Will, my mentor, had planned for the whole team to go into the mountains where we would be playing and practicing basketball while coming together closer as a team. We went to a camp site near Lake Arrowhead to experience how it felt working out in the high altitude.

During our stay at the camp site, we practiced everyday for 3 to 4 times so we could become better basketball players for our upcoming season. We did many drills to improve our offensive and defensive skills. We developed our shooting with a shooting clinic and while always going back to the fundamentals in all of our drills. We also had many scrimmages where we would practice our offensive and defensive strategies and always going back to watch film of ourselves so that we are able to figure out what we can do better as a player and as a team.

We also did team bonding activities and activities done at camp such as walking on wooden planks together as a unit so that we could learn how to work together as a team. We watched a movie about basketball one night and did archery. Overall, the experience of going to camp was good experience while being a great to enjoy playing basketball as a team.

Blog 12: Third Interview Questions

1. How can a coach best maximize his team's chances of winning a league championship?

2. What key factors help a coach win a league championship?

3. What is most important when trying to win a league championship? Why?

4. What kind of mindset should a coach have when in this position? Why?

5. What message should be relayed to players when in this kind of mindset? Why?

6. How should a coach handle problems that may occur while trying to achieve this goal?

7. What kind of mindset should a coach have with his players so both can achieve the same goal?

8. When does a coach know he has all the tools to win a league championship?

9. If a coach has all he needs, what are the next steps to achieve a league championship?

10. Where should a coach put winning a league championship in priority? Why?

Blog 11: Mentorship 10 Hours

1.   Where are you doing your mentorship?

At Southlands Christian School with the basketball team.

2.   Who is your contact?

The head coach of the varsity basketball team, Will Robbins.

3.   How many total hours have you done (total hours should be reflected in your mentorship log located on the right hand side of your blog like your WB)?  

10 Hours.

4.   Summarize the 10 hours of service you did.

The ten hours I did for mentorship included me watching what Coach Will does when he gets ready for practice and seeing all the things he does to help the team get better. We discuss all the things he tries to do to have the team get ready for games and we sometimes discuss what we could have done better in previous games.

5.   Email your house teacher the name of your contact and their phone number confirming who they should call to verify it.  

Done.

Blog 10: Senior Project: The Holiday

Content:

1.  It is important to consistently work on your senior project, whether it is break or we are in school.  What did you over the break with your senior project?

I attended all the practices that the Southlands team, the school I play for, had during the break. We did much conditioning and had many run throughs for the plan we have for our season opener that starts soon. This allowed me to gain hours for my Independent Component. I also collected more research for my research notebook about my topic.

2.  What was the most important thing you learned from what you did and why?  What was the source of what you learned?

The most important thing I learned was during a practice over the winter break. We were in a 3 man shell drill and Coach Will had pointed out that a person playing defense cannot be hopping while guarding their man. This is important because they can be caught on a screen and lose their man. What a defender should be doing is moving their feet a while being able to fight through screens so that they are able to guard their man well.

3.  If you were going to do a 10 question interview on questions related to answers of your EQ, who would you talk to and why?

I would talk to a high school basketball coach whose goal is to win a league championship. My EQ pertains to a coach who focuses on winning a league championship or also trying to win CIF which can help me answer my EQ.