Be a Team Before Competing as a Team

I am a junior high basketball coach, and every year before the season starts, we do a team retreat. Every player is required to attend, and we spend the entire weekend together, doing team building activities. The idea is to build the team and bring them together before practices and games ever start. I find that it really brings the girls together, and during the season, they stick together, win or lose. For the ten years since I started doing it, I have never had a team who didn’t get along. In fact, some of those girls from the first team I ever did it with are still best friends.