It’s 6:11 p.m. You’ve got one kid tying a shoe, two standing at the water jug, and four more half-listening while the line for your favorite drill snakes clear past the free-throw line, the sideline, or the cone you dropped near midfield. One assistant is explaining it again. A parent is watching from the bleachers thinking, This looks organized enough. But you know better. Half your practice is dying in that line.

I’ve seen this over and over. Coaches keep a drill because it’s a good drill on paper, or because they ran it when they played, or because the one sharp kid at the front makes it look useful. Meanwhile, everybody else is getting two reps every six minutes and learning how to stand around.

One of the best coaching decisions you can make is simpler than most people want it to be: cut any drill that creates long lines and low involvement.

Not because the drill is evil. Because dead time is where practice quality goes to rot.

Kids do not get better while waiting

This sounds obvious, but plenty of us coach like it isn’t.

If 12 players are waiting for one at a time turns, you do not have a skill-building activity. You have crowd management with a sports theme.

When I was younger, I used to hold onto certain drills too long because they looked clean. The setup made sense. The movement pattern matched the game. If you filmed the first 20 seconds, it looked like real coaching. Then the truth showed up: too much talking, too much waiting, not enough touches, not enough decisions.

That’s the trap. Coaches often confuse familiar with effective.

Most youth players need more reps, more movement, and more chances to make small mistakes without a traffic jam behind them.

Busy is not the same as useful.

The line test is brutally simple

Here’s a practice-management rule worth using: if more kids are watching than working, the drill needs to change.

Not next season. Right then.

You usually have four options:

  • Split the group in half and run the same drill at two stations.
  • Shrink the drill so more kids go at once.
  • Turn it into partner work instead of one-player-at-a-time work.
  • Kill it and move on to something more active.

I’ve cut drills in the middle of practice plenty of times. Not dramatically. Just a quick, “This line is too long. Grab a partner. We’re changing it.” Kids don’t care that you changed your mind. In fact, they usually like you more for it because now they actually get to do something.

That’s a useful coaching lesson by itself: your players do not need you to defend a bad plan. They need you to recognize it early.

What to watch instead of the drill design

A lot of coaches ask, “Is this a good drill?” I think the better question is, “What are my players doing most of the time?”

Look for this stuff:

  • How many seconds pass between reps?
  • How many players are engaged at once?
  • How much explaining is required to keep it going?
  • Does it create game-like decisions, or just a tidy pattern?
  • Do your weaker players get enough chances, or do your strongest kids dominate the useful reps?

I’ve coached enough teams to know this part stings a little: sometimes the drill you love most is the one hurting practice most.

Especially if it depends on perfect spacing, high attention, and one line feeding another line feeding a finish at the end. That setup falls apart fast with young players. Then you spend more time repairing the drill than teaching the skill.

Simple wins more often than clever

The practices that run best usually are not built on genius. They’re built on flow.

Three players per group works better than 12 in one lane. Partner passing beats waiting your turn. Small-sided competition beats one coach-controlled sequence that requires everybody to freeze when one thing goes wrong.

I learned this the hard way. Early on, I thought good coaching meant having a deep bag of advanced activities. After enough practices with restless kids and fading attention, I started respecting plain, repeatable structure a lot more.

Now if a drill can’t get lots of kids moving quickly, I’m already suspicious.

If you have to choose between a fancy drill and a high-rep drill, pick reps.

The culture piece matters too

Long lines do more than waste time. They invite side conversations, silliness, zoning out, and little attitude leaks that spread. Then coaches think they have a discipline problem, when really they have an involvement problem.

Kids who are engaged behave better. Not always. But a lot more often.

When practice keeps moving, players feel it. The energy improves. Fewer reminders are needed. Less barking from coaches. More actual coaching.

And just as important, your quieter or less confident players stop disappearing. In line drills, those kids can hide. In small groups or fast-rotation work, they have to participate. That’s good for development and good for team standards.

A quick rule for your next practice plan

Before practice, look at each activity and ask:

  • Can at least half my team do this at the same time?
  • Will each player get frequent reps in the first two minutes?
  • If it breaks down, can I simplify it fast?

If the answer is no across the board, it probably doesn’t belong.

That doesn’t mean every drill must be chaos and nonstop motion. Some teaching moments require pause and correction. That’s part of coaching. But if your default setting is kids waiting in lines for their moment, you’re giving away too much practice for free.

The best coaches I know are not married to drills. They’re committed to useful work.

Sometimes the smartest thing you do all night is scrap the activity you planned, spread the kids out, and choose something less impressive that actually lets them play.

That’s not lowering the standard.

That is the standard.