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I think one of the hardest decisions in the game of basketball is deciding whether or not to shoot. Although it seems like a simple task, this shot could be the difference of your team going up two points, your team losing a possession, of getting blocked by a defender, or of getting a foul called and going to the free throw line. If the defender is approaching too quickly I would always ponder the decision of when to shoot the shot. I now know that the my decision to shoot would be heavily influenced by the speed and accuracy trade off. Often, I would see plays take rushed shots out of their typical form because they thought they had the time to shoot, and the defender sprinted up too fast. The results of these shots were usually disastrous and ended in missed attempts to capitalize on points, which shows the lack of accuracy in their shots. I used the idea of the speed and accuracy tradeoff to gauge my shots. I would typically pass on a shot if I felt like the defender was rushing at me because I was a player who believed in accuracy. Why not make one more pass to an open player rather than hurling up a quick, and probably inefficient shot? When choosing a shot, you must create a perfect balance of these two skills so that you can get the shot off in a timely manner, but also have increased chances of scoring the basket and making the points for your team.

Here is a picture of me choosing to take a shot after analyzing the speed and accuracy trade-off.

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Every game day started out the exact same way. I would sit in the bleachers headphones in, blocking out the chatter of people around me and mentally rehearse what I needed to do that day. We knew the scouting report, we knew the defenses, and I would strategize and mentally repeat what would be best for me so that I could play at the top of my game. During warmups I would look at the gym, what did the baskets look like, how big was the crowd? All of these cues played into my teams strategy when it would come to game time. Once the national anthem played and the starters were announced, we knew it meant business. Flip to game time, and the opposing team sneakily broke out in a full court press. These always put our team into high stress mode because we would all have to act and react to specific stimuli, such as the defender trying to steal the ball or a trap in the corner, and react by passing or dribbling in the middle of the court. During half time, we knew that our coach would explain the patterns of their team and develop strategies and plans to help us attack their different defenses throughout the rest of the game.

Looking back, game day brought me and my team through the four quadrants of attentional focus each time. Before the game I would have a narrow and internal scope which would help me in my rehearsal of plays and defenses. The broad and external scope was useful in analyzing the lay of the gym and adapting our strategy to each specific environment so that we would be the most successful. During game time, the narrow and external would help each player recognize what was in front of them and make the appropriate move at the appropriate time to bring our team success. Halftime was all about the coach and her broad and internal attentional focus so that she could analyze what had happened in the previous half and come up with new strategies to help us better perform and ultimately win the game. The different quadrants of attentional focus were all used during each game day and aided in our overall understanding and actions before, during, and after the game.

Below is a picture of the team right before the National Anthem, and indicator that it was game time.

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Foul shooting. In theory it seems so simple, but to many players, both beginner and professional, it is the Achille's Heel of the sport. Stand at the line, no one guarding you, and put the ball in the hoop for free points. Free points. Games are lost and won because of this shot. My dad made sure that my brother and I were strong foul shooters by challenging us to endless games of 21 and 5/5 competitions. He made sure that we built this skill from the group up. Every practice session, we would end our workout with a series of 50 foul shots. I would say to myself, "foot on line, bend your legs, strong arch, and follow through." I was convinced that saying those words would help me make the basket, even though I often fell short. By middle school, I had become a somewhat decent foul shooter but still felt the need to improve. By then, I no longer used those verbal cues and I was making more and more of my 50 shots. By high school, I didn't have to think of my routine at all I would simply go up to the foul line and shoot. My dad's goals were reached, it was automatic to me. The screaming fans nor high pressure situations could mess up my ritual of making the shot.

As I reflect on this learning process, this illustrates the Fitts and Posner three stage model of motor learning. This model states that learning a skill requires three stages: cognitive, associative, and autonomous. During the cognitive stage performances heavily rely on cognitive or verbal cues. This is why it was so helpful to speak the motions as I was shooting when I was first learning. Throughout middle school, I was in the associative phase, where I was determining the most effective strategies and making only gradual improvements. This was my refining stage before I reached high school. By high school I was in the autonomous phase where the skill is largely automatic. This is why I was able to shoot, and make, many of my free throws in high pressure situations. I even hold the county record for most consecutive free throws made! My dad takes all the credit, but it was really me and my journey through the Fitts and Posner model that helped me learn this daunting skill.

Below is a picture of the basic motions of this simple, but deadly, shot!

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From the time I first picked up a basketball I told my dad that my signature move was going to be the spin move. I watched college and professional players with awe as they gracefully spun around the defender. When I finally learned this move I was stoked and I was never going back to the plain old crossover. Now, because I got pretty good at this move I would perform it at the basketball camps I would work at for the younger players. I cannot count how many times I was asked "How do you do that! Please please teach me!" I tried to explain to the younger players how to spin around the defender coordinating both your arms and legs. It seemed simple enough to me, but I could not find any words or analogies that would help younger players understand how to spin around the court.

Although I tried to teach beginners this skill I could not verbalize the movement because it had long been stored in my procedural memory. This meant that the spin move was relatively automatic and performing the move was a nonconcious thought. Tasks are usually put in the procedural memory because you have become an "expert" at the task. In this memory system, the task can be performed with ease but not so easily verbalized to another people. Eventually I figured out that the best way to teach the campers was by repeatedly showing them and having them jump in and perform the move alongside me, and eventually I had the whole camp spinning and performing my signature move.

Below is a picture of NBA player Tony Parker completing a spin move, someone who is undoubtedly an expert at this skill.

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As I was learning basketball one of the hardest tasks was differentiating whether to use just my arms or use both my arms and my legs so that I had enough power to reach the basket. Nothing was more frustrating then coming up short and having the ball rocket off the front of the rim, or even worse airball. Talk about embarrassing! My dad would always scream from the stands "use your legs!" I would roll my eyes at him with angst as if I didn't know that it was obviously that simple. I just needed to mature and figure out the distances. As I got older I was build a knowledge about what power to use where on the court that helped me promptly place the ball in the basket instead of shooting short.

Schmidt explains this phenomenon in his Schema Theory. This is when people practice a particular class of movements, or generalized motor programs, and acquire roles, also known as schemas, that they can use to determine the parameter values necessary to produce different versions of the actions. This related to my jump shot. If I was close to the basket I would recognize that this was a distance where I only needed to use my arms. Through practice I found the transition point of where I needed to start to use both my arms and my legs. The three point line was a distance that I knew I needed a super strong base. This theory helped me to establish a set of stable rules relating to the amount of power I needed related to my distance to the basket and has really helped me avoid the horror of airballing in front of a crowd.

Below is a visual representation of my brain when I finally worked acquired the schema I needed for my jump shots.

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One thing that is super important to know about me as a player is that I am a perfectionist. Always have, always will be. There is always a part of me that feels like I could have shot that shot a little better, sprinted a little faster, or made a sharper pass. This was my greatest attribute and my biggest downfall. I would spend hours in the gym shooting foul shots, performing dribbling drills, and running sprints to improve my game. Throughout my freshman year of high school I could feel myself getting faster, stronger, and better. The varsity team was in my grasp. Then one day it came to a screeching halt.

As many other athletes could probably relate the most frustrating experience for me as a player was a performance plateau. This is a period in time in which the learner experiences no improvement after having experience consistent improvement; typically the learner than experiences further improvement with continued practice. I hit this plateau midway through spring of my freshman year of high school during AAU season, which in my world was my time to get better. I think my performance plateau was in part due to fatigue and in part due to the transition in between the two phases of acquiring a skill. I felt like NOTHING could ever get me out of this rut. It felt like all my shots fell short no matter how much I practiced. Eventually, I refocused and was able to once again see growth over the summer. I even ended up making the varsity team as a sophomore, one of my proudest accomplishments.

Below is a picture of me my sophomore year with my teammates!

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When I spur of the moment decided to try out for girl's lacrosse freshmen year after being persuaded by the coach, she decided to break it down for me; defense in lacrosse is defense in basketball just with a stick. This was a great coaching move on her part, and she definitely had a a point. I had grown up playing defense in basketball, so why couldn't I learn how to play defense in lacrosse? The job of the defensemen in lacrosse is fairly simple, stop the opposing team from getting the ball into the net. Seems simple enough? Now add girls sprinting full speed at you, blindsided picks, and a rulebook full of penalties and you'll understand defense in girl's lacrosse is no cake walk. When you are defense in basketball, you must guard your man, the ball, and the basket. A similar idea in lacrosse is to guard your man, find the ball, and protect the goal. I believe the skills that I gained while playing defense in basketball when it came to spatial awareness, visual search, and quick decision making significantly helped me when jumping into the whole new world of lacrosse.

Although many people do not often relate girl's lacrosse with the sport of basketball, when defending many of the cognitive processes, like quick decision making, information processing, and verbal communication can have significant positive transfer, as explained in the transfer-appropriate processing theory. Positive transfer is the beneficial effect of previous experience on earning or performance of another skill. I was able to utilize the strategies that I had grown up learning in basketball to understand and learn the game of lacrosse. I picked up the position of defensemen with ease thinking about the fact that I was guarding the same way I would in basketball, only with a large stick in my hand. I was even able to earn a starting position all four years of high school.

Below is me in one of my first high school lacrosse games!

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Even typing this phrase brings a smile to my face. My sophomore year of high school basketball, I was pulled up to the varsity level. I felt like a little fish in a small pond. My assistant basketball coach, Coach Bray, and I developed a close relationship because he thought I could improve my game and be starting on varsity by my junior year. “Fake a pass, to make a pass.” I can hear his voice ringing inside of my head as I type this quote, his signature line that he would scream at least twice every practice or game. He would always say that his favorite move in basketball was a pass fake because it worked 99% of the time, of course if you sold it right, and would guarantee you an easy shot or pass to your teammate.

After taking this class at college I can finally go back to Coach Bray and tell him that he was right all along, that silly rhyming phrase actually is backed by the idea of our psychological refractory period. In the game, when we were making the quick pass to our teammate with defenders tight on us, girls would sometimes get the ball stolen. That is when Bray screamed “fake a pass to make a pass.” He was right in this logic. Our movement was organized as a single unit and prepared in the motor programming stage. However, if we threw a fake the defensive player would only be able to see the first part of our action, and would then respond by trying to block the path and intercept the ball. The processing of our fake would leave the player to have a large delay in responding to the information, that we didn’t make a pass, and that we threw a convincing fake. Nevertheless, the defender cannot stop the first action, and they hurl themselves into the lane. This always gave us time to easily pass the ball to our open teammate as the defender was trying to initiate the second response, blocking the actual pass. By then it was too late, and Bray was cheering that we executed his favorite move with ease and precision, and made the defender look like a fool. Whenever I played basketball I remembered “fake a pass to make a pass,” a phrase that only works because of our psychological refractory period.

Below is a video of Kobe Bryant illustrating our coach's beloved phrase, "fake a pass to make a pass."