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.