Ep 380 What Can a Rugby Coach Teach Your Basketball Team? ( Part 1)

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Coach Bill welcomes Nate Dalena, CEO of Rugby NorCal and an eleven year youth coach, for a conversation that shows how much basketball and rugby share. James Naismith actually drew on rugby when he invented basketball, and Nate argues that both games are really about evasion: moving defenders where you want them and attacking the space you create. His ball carriers are taught to attack the “branches,” a defender’s arms and shoulders, not the center of the body, which is exactly what a good driver does on the court.

Nate also explains how rugby keeps kids safe through technique instead of padding, starting with how to hit the ground. His cue is “butt, back, ball”: land on your side, then your back, and keep your head up. Coach Bill connects it to taking a charge, which is disappearing in youth basketball because kids are afraid of the contact. Teach them to fall with bent knees, a tight body, and their side hitting first, and the charge gets a lot less scary. Nate adds a baseball style slide for winning loose balls, and a reminder for parents worried about a “soft kid”: confidence in contact is a teachable skill that comes with reps.

On growing a sport almost nobody knows, Nate walks through Rugby NorCal’s pathways, from non contact flag rugby for four year olds to Summer Sevens and high school leagues, plus partnerships with parks departments and youth organizations that fit into their calendars instead of competing with them. His biggest lesson is that parents of young kids are not choosing a sport. They are choosing an experience and a coach they trust. Show up early, shake every hand, start on time, end on time, and aim for what he calls a positive rugby day, which almost never has anything to do with the scoreboard.

When Coach Bill hands him an hour with a group of sixth graders, Nate starts with a fun game like ultimate basketball, moves to a drill on the day’s skill, then goes back to the game to apply it. In the rapid fire round, he would bring back rec basketball with teams picked on the spot, and he wants every coach to steal rugby’s tradition of each captain naming a player of the match from the opposing team. His closing message: let kids play multiple sports, build trust and fun early, and you will have players who love the game when it really starts to matter.

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