Recognize – Reflect – Adapt
Every season we ask for members feedback, and through thematic analysis we can see the trends and themes that help us make necessary adjustments. We recognize that the communication of ‘why’, and supporting parents understanding of youth development has not been good enough. Reflecting on the areas parents have most provided feedback on, we need to do adapt our engagement around the concept of ‘challenge’, and with internal education for coaches supporting delivery in alignment with theory. The following few points will address this briefly as an introduction, and a great article of a similar concept, click below.
- Youth sports is a learning experience, no different to learning anything at a young age.
- At its very foundation learning is guided by theory and learning principles, this drives curriculum and session design, specifically, we adopt the constructivist learning theory.
- Coaching, like all areas of expertise, develops over time, and there is a huge amount of literature on modern coaching practices that are best for youth athletes. However, coaches are slow to pick this up and continue to use more traditional methods.
- Age-appropriate learning comes from experiences, built on elements and concepts introduced at age-appropriate times, and is a long-term process for deeper learning ‘scaffolded learning’.
This leads to ‘CHALLENGE’
- Challenge comes from the constraints placed on the training practice.
- Challenge is both individual and team constraint led.
- Play activities drive great motivation in players and deeper learning opportunities, with challenge specific to game context.
- It is a longer process, but players learn, have fun, and deeper learning provides the foundations for late age performance.
- Play activities not only supports players, but also modern coaching practice in the delivery through guided discovery, questioning, and problem solving, all these are athlete led coaching behaviors, and in contrast to the traditional instruction and negative feedback process still prevalent in coaching and are coach centered behaviors.
Individuals learn, not teams, and the bracket or league played in is not ‘challenge’. In youth soccer, it takes one or two individuals to carry team outcomes.
Process driven coaching supports confidence, not winning and outcomes, these provide short lived levels of excitement, and not feeling of self-efficacy for continued self-determination.
The short term outcomes, focusing on league and competition names, and the inevitable bi-product of must win to maintain status, all leads to athlete burnout.