Mastering the Art of Post-Game Evaluation

Written by Brooke Basham, Co-Founder of CAP

I would like to propose a strategy that you and your daughter can work together on to maintain incremental improvements while ensuring they still enjoy their basketball journeys.

Our natural ways of being has a negative bias, especially when it comes to judging our performance of games. Our reflection of games can be perceived in such a negative light if we only focus on certain things we performed ‘bad’ at. As you could imagine, this leads to a rapid downward spiral. Reflection and evaluation should be helpful, instead of a total destruction to one’s confidence, happiness and enjoyment of the game.

I always immensely struggled in this area. I would judge my performance on my shooting percentage or how many turnovers I made. In the last couple of years, I implemented a new methodology in which completely changed my perspective on ‘performance’.

I started evaluating my performance on:

• How well I prepared for the game (I believe this increases my chances of feeling confident on the court, therefore I have a better chance of playing well)

• My energy

• My attitude

• My effort

• My mental toughness when things don’t go as planned (which by the way, it will never go as planned)

The last criteria was the most important one of all……

• ‘Did I have fun? Did I enjoy it?’

When I removed my ‘outcome’ based thinking such as how many points or assists I had and in contrast, focused on a ‘process’ driven mentality- my game progressed, and I actually enjoyed the journey of simply trying to get better.

It seems so simple, yet it is so profound. Although it is a relatively simple skill- this doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be challenging to implement and buy into this kind of mind set. It will take time. But adopting a process driven mentality can be the difference of fulfilling your capabilities OR never reaching your potential.

Process driven mentality> Outcome driven mentality.

How The
Evaluation Strategy Works

There are two different evaluation strategies I implemented and completed at two separate times. One evaluation 60 minutes post competition and the other evaluation the following day, post competition. This allows for reflection time and for my emotions from the game to level out.

There are two ways to do this- I would encourage an open discussion with your daughter OR just as effective, write it down in a journal!

I do both. Sometimes, I will have a conversation with my Mum or a close loved one who watched my game. Or sometimes I simply write it down in my journal. Either way, I am constructively reflecting on my game to then have a specific focus for the upcoming training week.

I discovered an extremely beneficial side effect from implementing this new method- it helped me to psychologically move on from games. As athletes, we dwell on ‘bad’ performances which can eat at us, feeding self-doubt and can affect future games. However, by carefully deconstructing my game by talking out loud or writing it down, I got it out of my system which forced me to quickly and efficiently move on to the next challenge!

This, I found was the real game-changer.

Never get too high. Never get too low.

The Evaluation Strategy

1. Evaluation 60 mins post competition:
   Did you have fun? Did you enjoy it?

   Did you leave it all out there? How would you rate your overall effort out of 10? How was your mental toughness?

2. Following day evaluation:

   • Two things to improve.

   • Three things you did well.

You can probably notice there is zero ‘outcome’ driven processes. And only ‘process’ driven ones, which is the formula to evolving, happy and grateful humans and athletes!

Now, whatever you and your daughter discuss about regarding three things to improve on, establish together how in the upcoming week at trainings or at home can they get a tiny bit better at those two skills? Try and be as specific as possible. When and where will you attempt to work on the respective skills needing improvement?

I truly hope this helps and provides a new way to think about ’performance’ and how we can use this strategy in a helpful way to constantly improve.