Sport Parenting, Youth Coaching
Paul Gamble
Free-Range Athletes

The parallels between coaching and parenting are striking and both of these elements naturally come together with youth sports. The concept of free-range kids popularised by author (and parent) Lenore Skenazy thus readily applies to how we coach young athletes (as well as sport parenting). In each case, free play and participating in unsupervised games are essential parts of how children and young athletes develop. Engaging in play is central to how we learn to navigate the world and engage with others. Voluntarily participating in games with others (without intervention from the grown ups) teaches kids how to conduct themselves and develops the capability to interact with peers in a competitive context and a cooperative manner. A less structured environment where the kids themselves decide the playing area and the rules of the game affords the opportunity to apply what they have learned, explore different tactics and engage in trial and error. As such, free play and unsupervised games are particularly rich in opportunities to acquire and adapt sport skills and develop game sense. Given the myriad benefits and the essential role that these opportunities play in developing adept athletes and capable humans, it seems baffling that they are systematically being eliminated with today’s youth. So here we will make the case for applying the free-range perspective to rethink youth sports participation and talent development in a way that fosters engagement and creates self-reliant athletes.

Free-Range Athletes
Sport Parenting, Athlete Life
Paul Gamble
Helping Young Performers Find Their Aim

Having an end in mind is pretty important. Aspiring towards a future outcome provides the impetus and intent that helps us to act in the moment. Knowing where we want to get to also provides a sense of how we are progressing and in turn guides us along the way. Deciding upon an ultimate aim is thus a central theme of the youth sports journey. As we will explore to some extent the performer settles upon their ultimate aspiration through a process of elimination and will often try out a few before they find their true north star to guide the journey. These formative experiences and the lessons they contain are part of what makes participating in youth sports so valuable in developing crucial traits, tools and behaviours that serve the performer well not only in their chosen sport but also in their life outside sport.

Helping Young Performers Find Their Aim
Sport Parenting, Youth Coaching
Paul Gamble
What Performers Need to Hear

What we want to hear and what we need to hear do not always match up. Indeed in some instances they are distinctly different things! On the youth sports journey the performer will encounter numerous trials and situations that offer abundant lessons. The conversations with those around them are an integral part of how the performer makes sense of events, puzzle things through and elucidate what lessons to take. As the grown ups, it follows that coaches and parents alike have a duty to help performers be objective and uncover the insights to make the best use of these experiences. To that end, there is an onus on us to ensure that the performer maintains a healthy relationship with the truth and remains in touch with reality.

What Performers Need to Hear
Sport Parenting, Athlete Life
Paul Gamble
Feeling Privileged

The idea of privilege has taken on strange and somewhat dark connotations in recent times, as has the idea of feeling privileged. This strikes me as a little odd. As a coach I feel privileged to work with performers who are committed to their craft. I am quick to acknowledge that it is a privilege to coach these individuals and to have them place their faith in my expertise. I feel grateful for my good fortune. I also feel a profound sense of responsibility to hold such a privileged position and a duty to do great work in return. Perhaps we should foster a more healthy attitude towards privilege. By reframing how we think about privilege we can perhaps respond to it in ways that better serves the performer and those supporting them.

Feeling Privileged
Sport Parenting
Paul Gamble
Dealing with Distraction

Distraction is a constant feature of modern life. Current generations are growing up as digital natives and the allure of technology is ever-present in most environments. Clearly the genie is not going back in the bottle so it follows we should take steps to equip young performers to manage their own mental traffic to take back control of their actions and better deal with distractions of technological and other origin. The ability to marshal one’s own attention and resist becoming sidetracked is arguably the new superpower. Developing these capabilities to harness and direct our attention amidst all the distraction represents not only a competitive advantage but also the key to unlocking the possibilities for long term achievement in sport and beyond.

Dealing with Distraction

Adversity

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Navigating Talent ID and Selection in Youth Sports

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Navigating Talent ID and Selection in Youth Sports

One of the biggest travails of the youth sports journey is dealing with selection. Even the most successful athletes often recall instances of disappointment at not being selected for teams or being benched during their years competing at high school and junior level. Navigating selection and talent identification policies are thus part of youth sports. To help parents and young performers themselves deal with these trials we should try to understand the factors at play and perhaps find some strategies to overcome the challenges involved.

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Realising the Full Benefits of Youth Sports

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Realising the Full Benefits of Youth Sports

A notable casualty amid the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic has been organised sport below the elite and professional level. In recent weeks kids have cautiously returned to school, but youth sports and school sport in particular remain off limits for many. Competition schedules for the coming year are still in limbo. There is a question mark over whether there will even be a competitive season for some sports and this uncertainty extends to college sports, which is the end-goal that many high school aspire to. Against this backdrop, the numbers of kids who have returned to participating in training and practices are way down since the lockdown and returning to school. There is an understandable reluctance among parents and the kids themselves to reengage in sport, given the perceived risks. Some authors are already sounding the alarm that the present generation of high school kids may be lost from participating in organised sport.

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Weekly Reflections: Practising Gratitude

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Weekly Reflections: Practising Gratitude

In these strange times we perhaps have a newfound appreciation of the many comforts, amenities, and simple pleasures that we normally have at our disposal. Since many of these things are presently subject to restrictions and various everyday pursuits are temporarily not available to us, we certainly now miss them and eagerly look forward to normal service being resumed. It turns out we have much to be grateful for. This got me thinking on gratitude, what role it plays in our everyday lives, and how this all relates to the journey of the athlete. A broader question is how we might appreciate the good stuff without needing to rely on extreme events to bring it to our attention.

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Weekly Reflections: Finding a Way

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Weekly Reflections: Finding a Way

Clearly the major current news story that is affecting all of us presently is the COVID-19 pandemic. Things escalated pretty quickly over the past week with the suspensions of college competition and professional leagues (perhaps less news-worthy, but I also took the step of postponing the workshop that I was due to present this weekend). Beyond disrupting competition, the precautions regarding public gatherings and restrictions to indoor training facilities access that are likely to come into force could conceivably also disrupt training and practices. I know several running groups locally have temporarily shut down. A number of professional athletes for whom competition is currently suspended are currently also unable to access their training facility. At this time, finding a way and exploring alternatives for training remotely within these restrictions seems highly pertinent.

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Weekly Reflections: Adversity as Opportunity

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Weekly Reflections: Adversity as Opportunity

The topic for this latest offering was inspired by a parent of a young athlete I have the privilege of working with. The parent in question greatly impressed me with how they chose to respond to a recent setback, which included declining my offer to intervene on her daughter’s behalf. We generally think of times of adversity and setbacks as at best something to be endured (under duress). Our natural inclination is to steer clear of difficulties, and our urge is to shield those we care about from potential upset. However, as the parent in question intuitively understood, going through these difficult experiences is in fact vital to our mission.

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Weekly Reflections: Real Life Meaning

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Weekly Reflections: Real Life Meaning

Last weekend a former athlete reached out to me. Seumas was one of the student athletes on the university sports scholarship programme I was responsible for (his sport was rugby union), and I trained Seumas for perhaps three years during my time in Edinburgh before we moved to New Zealand. Aside from seeking to wish me happy birthday, Seumas wanted to thank me for the knowledge and coaching input I gave him as an athlete, but more specifically for helping him through challenging times during an extended injury lay off. Seumas went on to say that the help and guidance during that time had strengthened him mentally, and as a result has had an enduring benefit in all aspects of his life since then. The idea that the coaching I provided to an athlete might have had a lasting impression on them is of course gratifying, but more striking was the assertion that there was a real impact on the life of the athlete. So that is the theme for this week’s post.