Helping Athletes Grow

Not only is sport all about having fun in a welcoming environment, but it is about growing. Growing as a person, as an athlete, and as a mentor. When you compare yourself when you first started out in a sport to a few years later you will always notice a large difference. You have much better skills and are much more knowledgeable, but you are also a much different person. You can look back and see that you now, like those before you, can help the newer players, and that the younger players now look up to you. But as a coach, there are a number of ways that you can fast track this growth and help your players of all development stages get the best out of their sport and most importantly, them selves.

One of the most important things to achieving this is to encourage your athletes to set goals. This encourages all athletes to give their everything in trainings and games, and teaches them that small steps can lead to massive things. The main thing is that they are taught not to give up. Ensure that the goals they are setting are realistic and achievable, so as not to discourage them, and the sense of achievement when they realise their goal will be amazing for them. This will in turn encourage them to set more goals and grow and grow.

Not only does setting goals help the athlete to grow as a player, it also allows you, as the coach to individualise each person’s learning. Not all athletes respond to the same types of environments and learning experiences, so taking the time to set goals with your athletes allows you to explore what works for them and to design sessions around each team members requirements.

Also, engaging in social activities outside of training and games can help the confidence of players. If your team feels like friends that play sport together, it will turn training and games into another chance to spend time with their friends, rather than a chore or something they have to do. It is important to encourage the bonding over things that they have in common, such as trips to sporting events, watching it on television or helping out at other teams’ games. Also, having a vested interest in the sporting club helps the athlete to grow. Getting involved with the other teams and people around the club helps to create a culture that everyone wants to be around and where everyone can help each other and learn from each other.  From a personal experience, becoming involved in the club and teams outside of my own has made my playing experiences so much more fun and rewarding.

As a coach you have a major impact on the players that you coach, both their sporting abilities but also just their life in general. The more that you can help them develop in all aspects, is not only more beneficial for them, but you can be so rewarding for you too!

Passion

Passion is defined as an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something. But how important is passion in the participation, coaching and study of sport?

The best experiences in sport often come when we attach a fair amount of personal meaning to things. This is where the passion comes in. The living and breathing of it. Sure, motivating yourself to train or play at your best isn’t hard because you bleed the sport, but what about those teammates that turn up, do the minimum and then leave. This can taint your sports experience. What is it exactly that makes you love the sport? It can be all different reasons, but together, you and your teammates share a bond.

Being a passionate supporter of a team can be wonderful. Walls covered in posters, jerseys and memorabilia, face paint and temporary tattoos on every possible occasion, and the countless pieces of merchandise that you own. This may be the team you have grown up with, a team built on superstars, or colours that you like, whatever it is that makes you so passionate about them. But when it all goes wrong for your team, scandals, losing streaks and financial struggle, it separates the fans from the fanatics, the ones who like the idea, from the ones that would move mountains to make a difference.

Trying to coach unmotivated and unpassionate players can be a huge challenge. It becomes so wearing on you, test after test they resist everything that you try to throw at them. Soon enough it’s no longer fun for you, because you are sick of chasing, sick of trying to make them do something they won’t. This negative energy becomes a weight on you, and it gets passed onto the other players as well. But how do you break that cycle without it breaking you? The key thing to understanding these people is to decipher why they play the sport and what they like about it.

Studying something you are passionate about makes staying up late and spending weekends doing assignments all worth it. You learn so much because you want to gain as much knowledge as you can on the area. Not only that but you get to do it all with people that have all the same interests, and you can learn endless amounts of information from.

From all of this, we can see that passion is a key ingredient in the sports industry, whatever role you play.

Introduction

Sport is my passion! Ever since I was tiny, I have been running around with a ball, bat, racquet or club in my hand and I wouldn’t have it any other way! Growing up with two younger brothers, and having a massive competitive nature, it was only natural that we used to play every sport under the sun in the back yard, that was conveniently shaped like a cricket pitch, but that also had a basketball ring, netball ring, a trampoline, homemade football posts and a long brick wall for rebounds. I think back to some of the games we invented and wonder how our parents didn’t go crazy!

 PE days in primary school were my favourite, and I loved the swimming, athletics and cross country carnivals. When it came time to choose a sport, I decided on netball, which was interesting, because I didn’t know much about the sport. Having come from a family where my mum’s family played hockey and my dad’s family played AFL, they were shocked but very excited for me and supportive. Looking back now, watching kids in year 2 play netball can be extremely painful, so I am lucky that they were there for me. I played netball for 13 years, having competed for clubs, schools and representative teams.

 During high school, I competed for the school in every sport they offered, you name it, chances are I played it. PE and its electives were my favourite classes, and I always took as many as I could. I loved that competition and I certainly loved that I could match it with the boys, eventually taking out the PE faculty awards in my senior years. I always have and will love netball, but when I finished year 12 I felt as though I needed a change. And along came AFL. I copped a lot for playing a ‘boys sport’, but I knew it was something I had to explore, and the physical nature was something that netball could not offer me. Both of my brothers had taken up AFL by this stage, so I also found them to be extremely helpful resources for my new sport.  Taking up footy was easily the best decision I have ever made, I love the contact nature of it, I have made some incredible friends that I will keep forever, and most importantly, I am so happy and passionate, and proud to tell people that I play football. It is such a demanding sport but that is the greatest thing, because it pushes me to become the absolute best athlete and sportsperson that I can be. Having just finished my 3^rd season in 2012, I had an outstanding year, finally getting the chance to represent my state and playing some club football that I am so proud of and have watched grow since my first game. I cannot wait for the 2013 season to get up and running, I have pushed myself so hard in the preseason, and need to keep playing quality football, with a number of opportunities to play for the ACT again if I can play well.

Aside from this, I find myself helping coach the youth girls AFL team, which I am so enthusiastic about, I cannot wait to see what I can give to them and what they can teach me! Learning wise, I am very passionate about females in sport and the role they play. No longer is it acceptable for society to pigeonhole males as athletes and females as administrators/managers, etc. Females are just as important on and off the sporting fields as males, and I would love to work on raising the profiles and portrayals of women in sport and forcing that culture shift that is long overdue! I have focused a large amount of my assessments and research on this topic, including a research project in Canada and the United States midway through 2012 on portrayal of female athletes in the print media, and it is something that I would love to continue developing as I continue through Uni and into the workforce.

The main thing I would love to share with everyone that I come across in the sports field is that sport has so much to offer each and every person, and that you should grab every opportunity given to you with both hands. Sport can lead us to incredible things if we just believe in it but most importantly, ourselves.