by Trinity Erickson, on Mar 5, 2025 2:10:19 PM
After months of preparation and hard work, the basketball season has officially come to a close. Before you kick up your feet and take a well deserved vacation, there are a few tasks you need to do right away to ensure a smooth transition into the off-season.
Here are 5 things every coach should check off their post-season to-do list as soon as possible.
1. Recognize Staff, Administration, and Volunteers
Take the time to thank and recognize the people who have supported you throughout the season. From assistant coaches, your AD, school administration, and parent volunteers, there are people working in the background to make sure your team is supported.
If you're looking for ideas on how to say "thank you", you could:
- Have your players write thank you cards
- Send out an email highlighting every person and their role
- Plan special recognition at the team banquet
- Simply say "thank you"—this goes a long way
2. Post-Season Player Evaluations
Giving feedback and highlight growth at the end of the season is crucial for a player's personal and skill development! As the coach, you can choose to do individual evaluations on skills, hustle, teamwork, etc, or you can have a team event where players do a self-guided evaluation.
Click below to download our FREE Post-Season Player Self-Evaluation sheet.
3. Host An End-of-Season Event or Awards Banquet
With everything going on at the end of the season, don't forget to get your players, parents, and coaches together to celebrate the team's accomplishments! Organize a team meal or large group activity. Or, plan an awards banquet to hand out letter awards, academic awards, individual player awards, and have one final recognition for your seniors.
If you want to do something more non-traditional, you could have fundraiser planning meeting with the parents while the players have a 3v3 or 5v5 competition. Then, still have a meal and awards afterwards.
No matter what you decide, this is a big checklist item especially if you're looking to create a stronger team culture.
4. Identify Off-Season Focuses
Once you've collected jerseys, completed player evaluations, and had your banquet, you can then look to start prepping for the off-season. Identify areas where there's still room for improvement or skills you'd specifically like your team to focus on.
From there, work with individual players to set off-season training goals or create an off-season workout guide to hand out to the entire team. Be sure to set expectations for check-ins and when your players can expect the gym to open back up.
Need some workout inspiration? Check out our Off-Season Player Guide for ball-handling workouts, shooting drills, and strength training programs.
5. Personal Reflection
And one of the biggest things you should do right at the end of the season? Personal reflection. How do you think the season went? Did you ever feel your time was extremely limited? What was one of your favorite memories from the season?
Questions like these can help you identify things you need to address in the off-season. And by doing this reflection before you step away for a few weeks, you can actually enjoy your time off and come back refreshed!
Looking for More Post-Season Tips?
Hear from Coach Greg Berge of Great Teams - Better Leaders on what he focuses on once the basketball season ends.
Subscribe to the Great Teams - Better Leaders newsletter and join the 14,000+ coaches getting even more tips on coaching, leadership, and culture.
Have a goal of transforming your coaching beyond X's and O's this off-season? Take the Better Coach OS course and learn how to better lead, inspire, and succeed.
