Ninham’s basketball coaching videos, books receive national attention

Dan Ninham’s hobby and love for coaching basketball are earning national attention.

His latest DVD instructional, Conditioning & Combination Drills, is featured on the Sysko’s Sports Productions national catalog cover for the month of October.

The Bemidji Middle School physical education teacher and former Cass Lake-Bena head basketball coach produces instructional films and playbooks to help coaches around the country.

“It takes a lot of work,” Ninham said. “It’s common in our family to say ‘there’s no magic wand and if you want to get something done you have to go out and do it.’”

The hour video available through Wisconsin-based Sysko’s teaches 20 small group and team fundamental drills, including the mentality for a pressure defense and high-scoring offense.

Ninham’s instructional videos are based on 14 years of experience coaching at Cass Lake-Bena from 1996-2010. The Panthers were 255-83 under Ninham and reached the state tournament in five of his last six years as head coach.

He has organized coaching clinics for the last 12 years, developed instructional videos for distribution for the last seven years and started his own publication company last year: Coach Dan Ninham Basketball.

Ninham’s most popular instructional video to date is ‘Mutiple Scramble Pressure Defense for High School Basketball’ and is available at BasketballCoach.com through Championship Productions, a worldwide distribution company.

That video is a blue ribbon best-seller and is a customer favorite along with videos produced by Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo and Rick Majerus. The video has gained over $21,000 in sales for Championship Productions and Ninham earns a percentage of the proceeds.

“It’s part of the business of contributing to coaching of basketball and that is the No. 1 goal,” Ninham said. “Gaining revenue from that is really secondary.”

One of Ninham’s more popular publications is the yearly State Champion Basketball Playbook. The 2011 edition features a collection of profiles, drills and set plays contributed by 23 high school champion coaches throughout the country.

The Playbook has earned national recognition and 7,000 copies will be distributed to coaches at the 2013 Nike Championship Basketball Clinics. Hundreds of copies have been distributed at coaching clinics in Minnesota, Washington, Wisconsin and Illinois.

The videos and publications he produced locally. Arrow Printing prints the coaching manuals and Burger/Bredon films the videos.

“I like to keep things within the community,” Ninham said.

Ninham is organizing 20 coaching clinics and player camps in 2012 featuring 40 different coaches from around the country. The clinics are open to the public and will be held in Minneapolis, Green Bay, Wis., and Chicago. He plans to hold 11 of the 20 clinics in Red Lake.

“Last year I planned 40 events in six states and none panned out,” Ninham said. “I deliberated a few weeks and thought about getting out of that business. I expanded it instead based on variables, the economy, interest and motivation of the coaches out there.”

Ninham did not coach last winter after resigning at Cass Lake-Bena in 2010. But he will return to the court this winter at at Red Lake High School, where his wife Susan is the assistant principal. Ninham will be the assistant coach under head coach Roger White.