COACH CATCH UP is an ongoing blog series we’ve created to be able to highlight different sports team coaches, and talk one-on-one with them to hear about their story and coaching experience. Here, we had the pleasure of speaking with Coach John Manzon from NASSA.
The beginning of basketball
Born and raised in Newham with Filipino roots, Coach Manzon has been playing and loving basketball since primary school. It was a few years ago he started coaching here and there, but it was only until September 2021 that Manzon got into coaching full time.
When he was a kid, he saw his friends playing basketball which sparked his interest in the sport and he began playing. He quickly got introduced to NASSA (Newham All Star Sports Academy) and started playing for them. It’s pretty cool to see it come full circle for Coach Manzon, as today he’s a coach for NASSA.
When asked about his “why” for being a basketball coach, he shared, “I got inspired, so now it’s my turn to inspire. When I was younger the reason why I wasn’t just running around Newham or London was because I was constantly at basketball training in the mornings, in the afternoons, just trying to work on my craft”. He sees himself doing this for many years to come and he loves doing it.
The aspect he loves most about coaching for NASSA is seeing how much impact he has as a coach on a player’s life and how he can help change their lives for the better. He also loves meeting loads of different players from different backgrounds with different problems and how they come together to play one sport. He shares, “It’s amazing seeing how much chemistry your players build”.
Motivating the players
The oldest age group Coach Manzon currently coaches is U16s, an age where they start getting more into the technical side of basketball.
In talking about key barriers and challenges as a coach, Manzon shares, “With the younger kids they like to do a lot more sports. So maybe they’ll come in for one training or two trainings a week, whereas the older kids know that ‘okay I want basketball to be my thing’. With the younger lot that participates in multiple sports, they’re pretty young and I think it’s important for them to stay physically active. So if they like the other sport that’s completely fine with me, you have my support, because it’s what the kids want. And with the older lot they know what they want and that they want to do basketball so it’s more of the thinking ‘oh yeah I’ll be there I’ll be there for practice’.”
We talked more about the older kids and how they stay motivated. Coach Manzon comments, “They’re very self-motivated. It’s just about pushing them past a certain wall. Everyone gets to a point where you either want to carry on or you sit down and rest. It’s the same with the younger players as well. A lot of my younger players are self-motivated and want to get better. Again, when it gets to that wall of ‘oh, I’m tired and I need a break’ it’s whether they want to get past that barrier and keep going.”
Having fun goes hand in hand with motivation and Coach Manzon always focuses on fundamentals, but also having fun at the same time. He says, “If the players aren’t having fun, they aren’t going to get better. If they love how intense the game is, then it’s all about the passion. Going into a tied game, it’s all about making sure that they have fun whilst knowing what to do better. At the end of the day you come off of a loss but you need to understand like ‘wow that was a good game of basketball.’ Having little targets makes them have fun. If you tell them I want you to at least take one shot today and that one shot ends up being a bucket then they respond “oh my god I did what coach said to do!’ I really like to emphasise the fun, hence the fundamentals”.
Building better players, better people
Coach Manzon puts his whole being into coaching and working on player performance on an individual level. While he doesn’t keep track of any of this on paper, he remembers everything. For example he shared, “There’s this player that struggles with their left hand, so I would focus one week to have that player just work on their left hand. I’ll tell them, ‘I know as a team we’re doing the right hand, but I want you to use your left hand.’ I’ll see how the player is doing throughout the coming weeks and then what I’ve noticed is, they go from only being able to make 5 lay-ups, to then 10 in the row, and it builds on. It ends up being a habit for them”.
Another big lesson Manzon teaches his players is the importance of listening. He reinforces this every practice not only on a basketball level but also for the players to take with them outside of practice. He shares “Not only do I want them to listen to me, but also their parents and teachers, to make sure they’re getting stuff done. I have an agreement with my U12 and U14 kids that if they’re causing trouble at school or not doing homework that there will be strikes, like one game or practice ban”.
Coach Manzon also pushes ‘urgency’ as well. “The previous training on Monday I said ‘when I blow my whistle you guys have to be urgent and come in but this also applies if your mom says XYZ, come here, or if your teacher says make sure you do your homework tomorrow, you’re urgent about it” he shares.
Getting players to communicate is also important to Coach Manzon. He says, “For like 2-3 minutes of a game I stay quiet. I walk up and down the sidelines and I have my arms folded because I just want to see them talk rather than just hear my voice.”
Something Coach Manzon is starting to do with his younger players is get them to watch back their games so they can do better next time. He says, “I’m a fairly new coach to the national league so I’d been thinking about trying this out but hadn’t had the confidence to, but now I’m going to try this out”.
Something that Manzons has been doing post-game, and will continue to do, is sit down with his teams and ask them what they did well and what they could’ve done better. By asking and allowing the players to talk, it matures their way of thinking and improving as a player.
Goals and inspiration
Coach Manzon’s main goal moving forward is just to be a better coach each year, wherever that brings him.
When asked if there’s a professional basketball coach that he looks up to and aspires to be, he said “Erik Spoelstra from Miami Heat. He is the first Filipino coach in the NBA and he had the pleasure of coaching Lebron James, Dwayne wade, Chris Bosh, ray Allen, Ray Lewis, all of these amazing players. And I wouldn’t mind being in his footsteps one day”.
A fun and final question we asked Manzon was ‘if you could have lunch with another athlete who would it be?’ Manzon responded, “Draymond Green. He’s recently been popping up as a podcaster and the basketball mind he has intrigues me. I find myself listening to his podcast more and more. Seeing how he sees the defensive end and offensive end is amazing”.
To see some of the video highlights of the interview check out TeamSportz social media over the next couple of weeks!
