Sporting groups consists of various different types of participants who get involved for various reasons and interests.
The sporting groups consists of:
- Athletes
- Volunteers and parents who act as coaches
- Coaches
ATHLETES :
They are mainly split into 3 categories:
- 6 – 11 years old
- 11 – 15 years old
- 15 years and above
Though there might be obvious and major differences between these groups they also share common beliefs in having fun and engaging in personal pursuit of excelling under proper guidance of a knowledgeable and committed coach.
6 – 11 YEARS OLD GROUPS :
- The major focus is fun, fitness and fundamentals.
- Emphasizes participation rather than intense competition.
- Always aims at developing skills and techniques.
- Enjoyable to coach due to their spontaneity, willingness to try anything and eagerness to learn.
Things to take into consideration :
- Can become bored easily if training is not fun
- The attention span is minimal hence long duration training do not lead to lot of new learning.
- When bored they lose focus.
11 – 15 YEARS OLD GROUPS :
- Major focus is participation and skill refinement.
- Real socializers.
- True to their nature, love to challenge authority.
Things to take into consideration :
- Life to them resembles like a roller coaster with lots of ups and downs.
- Peers influence positive or negative has major impact.
- Coach needs to tolerate challenges, nonsense and complaining.
- The coach needs to set guidelines and limitations for expected behavior.
- Coach needs to enforce consequences for violations, demonstrate fairness, consistency and follow through.
15 YEARS AND ABOVE GROUPS :
- Focus on strategies, tactics and fine tuning.
- Ready for evaluation by coach, peers and public.
- Able to deal with the emotional aspects and consequences of winning and losing.
- Coach should contribute to final stages of maturity.
- Coach should give freedom to think critically, make decisions independently and face consequences of their own actions.
VOLUNTEERS AND PARENT AS COACHES :
We are a competition driven society where people say, “no one remembers who comes in second,” and sadly this point of view has drifted down from coaches and parents alike into youth sports group.
Winning oriented attitude by parents and coaches has caused lots of youth to drop out from sports.
But some have the best intentions of providing good learning opportunity for kids and are very sincere about it.
Various stereotype volunteers :
AVOIDER :
Makes sure everybody has fun but at the expense of learning new skills.
PUSHER PERFECTIONIST :
Identifiable using the teams performance, if only the best players play even when there is a huge lead and winning is always kept as the main perspective. Loss is taken personal and team members are punished either by extra tough practices, silent treatment and isolation.
CONVINCER :
Persuades athlete to play even when injured or in pain. Coaxes athlete via promises or dominates them using guilt or fear he/she believes that it is highly motivational, but does not realize that these methods are lethal to any training program.
MODERN COACH :
- Demanding, multi dimensional, time consuming and complex.
- Coach may have to fill roles as substitute mother/father
- Friend, counsellor, therapist.
- Teacher, coach, trainer.
- Leader, organizer, manager, salesperson and recruiter.
- Identify individual differences.
- Develops technical, physical, athletic and psychological abilities.
- Prepare coaching program.
- Evaluate program, coaching staff.
- Develop personal coaching competency, coaching philosophy.
- Proper communication.
- Demonstrates leadership.
FACILITATOR ENABLER :
Ideal coach. Athletes are the focal point of the program.
Empowers and facilitates learning of athletes.
Aware of the complexity and responsibility in teaching the next generation.
Does not expect instant gratification.