During my career as a reading teacher, basketball coach and chemical dependency counselor, my main students were the 11 to 17 adolescents. I taught middle school (6 to 8), high school (13 to 17) and adolescent programs for addictive adolescents from 12 to 19.

Was anxiety a key component that we dealt with? The answer to this question is a resounding “yes.” I’ll take you through three levels of education and what we did to deal with it, and how to attack anxiety at these levels from a manageable way.

Let’s start with remedial and developmental reading in middle school. The students that we (Mrs. Pat Shuster) and myself dealt with were between grades six through eighth. Many of these kids were failing in school because their reading levels were three to five grade levels below the grade they were in. For example, a sixth-grader (boy or girl) reading four grade levels below their grade level would tap out like this — grade 6 – 6.0 – 4.0 below grade, reading level would be 2.0 second grade.

Would you as a reader and novice to what I’m describing say that many of these children had “heightened anxiety” for being caught in the “failure trap” really through no fault of their own.

Pat and I started in the boiler room with our reading lab. We both knew that kids do not all learn at the same rate. So we tried to implement listening stations, audiovisual TVs, discussion areas, phonics stations, etc. with us, so we would learn about their background and where they come from.

Were they from authoritative homes, laissez-faire homes or did they control their families and everything they wanted was bestowed upon them? This makes a difference when we set up prescriptions for them.

Obviously anxiety was something we wanted to lessen by positive reinforcement, daily folders with our comments and being honest with the kids that if they followed our plan, that in the next 10 months we would get them up to at least 6.0. Most of the newspapers in this country are written on a sixth grade level. Thus with a program of phonics, sight word attacking, main ideas, context clues, interest reading and helping them track weekly where the improvement is coming from, made them a part of their education.

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Eye exams were often prescribed. The stations were their choices with our help. The reading fundamentals were taught, tested, retaught, retested until we felt the student was getting “it” and could now attack words on their own and look up their meanings with a thesaurus. Youth that were frightened to death in September were now helping their peers in February. The dissolution of the anxiety associated with fear of failure may not have been gone, but it was being managed better.

Each child went 1 on 1 with us for family issues, peer pressure, bullying and chemicals. Remember this was 1965, not 2025. In terms of reading levels, they are lower today than in our day. I’m not going to speculate why, but just an actual fact.

The biggest factor for our success was “listening” to these kids about what they would like to achieve in life for themselves and their families and how a lack of reading skills was holding them back. This is how we attacked anxiety in middle school kids. This particular group numbered 75 to 100 students who were deficient.

Next we will go on to high school where I coached basketball on the freshman and sophomore levels (junior varsity) and varsity high school for over 25 years.I started at the bottom coaching freshmen on the high school level. These kids were anywhere from 12 to 13 years old. Anxiety was a definite because most kids had very few basketball skills.

So, let me tell you, the reader, what I thought was important in their development to lessen their “athletic anxiety.” Every day, six days a week, we started with ball handling, not dribbling, getting to feel the basketball. Then dribbling in place, stop-n-go, speed, then passing like a line passing back and forth, then bounce passes, all angles. From here we would go on to going on the floor for loose balls, and quickly looking up court for a pass and score.Then we would do rebounding and tipping and learning to catch and throw an outlet pass. From rebounding we would go to learning screens, like cross screen, back screen and down screen. Then we would go to individual defense, stance, sliding your feet, no reaching. From individual defense we would now teach team defense.

As you can see, I have said nothing about shooting yet. Things like moving without the ball and anticipating passes, pivoting were worked on daily. I would imagine that as a player my anxiety would begin to lessen, because I was gaining confidence with fundamentals. Practices were posted daily as to the stations that these fundamentals were being taught. I never practiced more than one hour, 45 minutes. In between were conditioning drills for getting into shape. Our conditioning wasn’t just running, but running with the ball. If we did a three-man weave, we would finish it with a lay-up. If we did a three-man — three point shot at the end of it, first player, second player, third player would shoot off the weave until they hit a total of 15 points combined, always moving, following their shot and then passing it to the next man! Passing and catching are crucial to becoming a good player.

During the course of the season during skill sessions, I would test them on paper by drawing our offensive and defensive patterns. I would meet 1-1 with each player often. Doughnuts, milk, coffee and pizzas were our reward for practicing to the best of your ability. The anxiety I saw in November was gone by December, except the anxiety of pre-game to do what we were taught and get a win, playing together as one,

I would give them slogans from Vince Lombardi, the great coach of the Green Bay Packers, like “The will to win and the will to excel, they endure.They are more important than any event that occasions them.”

In other words, lacing them up every day, going to your craft and giving your best for that day is what life is really about. Of all the kids I dealt with in reading and basketball, 95% of them eventually handled anxiety because they knew they were prepared. It’s important to give your best effort and not worry about winning or losing any game. Your best is often good enough.

Coach Mike Tramuta is willing to assist as a boys or girls basketball coach. Call him at 716-983-1592 to discuss.