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.
Weekly Reflections: Engaging with Coaches
Welcome back to the regular reader, and greetings to anybody finding the Prepared Blog for the first time. Highlights from this past week included a visit to the Tennis Canada regional training centre for the province of British Columbia on Vancouver’s North Shore. On that note, the theme I chose to focus on this week is engaging with coaches, albeit I was also tempted to go down either the talent identification or talent development rabbit hole… I will save that for a future post!
Weekly Reflections: Building Relationships and Collaboration
The response to last week’s first instalment has been positive, so that seemed to merit sharing another update. As I rode in the rain on my way back from coaching this morning I pondered what I should share this week, in between marvelling at how many drivers in Vancouver apparently have no grasp of how roundabouts work. The chosen theme this week is relationships and collaboration.
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.