Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Zone defense at this age serves no purpose other than to win. It does nothing for their development.


True, because they will never play a zone defense as they advance through high school and into college. If they are playing the ball in their zone, communicating and recovering away from the ball, how is this hampering their development.


Their future HS coaches would like them to be really good on ball defenders that know how to slide and recover in man to man. When they have 4-5 practices a week then they'll teach them a zone as a chance of pace. The zone is especially effective in youth because other teams do not have time to implement and practice a zone offense for the 1 game they'll see it -- unless they care about winning more than development. Which is back to the original posters point. BTW I have 2 in HS and I haven't seen much zone being played so far this year