Zone by Zone readers I could use your help.
We have many generous people within our communities that are volunteering their time to coach. I am working on a goal to bring some resources to the web to help our youth coaches teach and coach our youth in a manner that produces skills and smiles. I believe that mastering skills can be fun. I strongly believe that some simple support systems for youth/rec coaches can help them teach skills that will lead to a fun and successful experience for all (players, coaches and parents).
Here is how you can help make a difference.
Please answer one or both of these questions by posting your information in the comments section. If you'd rather send your information directly to me you can do that too. My email is mikewilliams.vt@gmail.com.
If you are a parent or guardian (or hope to be someday): What does a "successful youth season" for your child look like from your perspective?If you are a youth coach (or hope to be someday): What does a "successful season" look like from your perspective? ...for you as a coach? ...for your team? ...for your players?
Know someone that could help with this quesiton? Please forward a link to this post to them?
Do you think your Twitter followers could help? If yes, could you please share?
Any and all comments are appreciated. Your contributions will help someone somewhere.
Best regards!
7 comments:
I'm glad you're asking these questions, they're hugely important. Here's my feelings as a parent (18yo, 6yo, 3yo) a former college and varsity hs coach, and a current tee-ball and middle-school basketball coach.
A successful season as a parent is one in which my child enjoyed going to practices & games, built relationships with his teammates and coaches, developed his skills further/learned new ones, learned and practiced good sportsmanship, received equitable opportunity to compete in games/matches/etc, and was made to feel good about himself and his development from practice to practice, game to game, and over the course of the whole season.
As a coach, a successful season is one in which all of the above happened for every player, and his/her parent(s).
Jim,
Thank you for your feedback.
Excellent points. Have you read the book The Double Goal Coach? I think you would like it. It is put out by the Positive Coaching Alliance. It is based on research done at Stanford.
Yes, in fact my AD has brought the PCA into our school the last few years to run coaching workshops, which were pretty good. I first heard about them from a coach who was a friend and competitor, a hardcore "disciplinarian" type, who found that they pretty much changed his entire approach to life (after 20+ yrs as a coach)!
I'm also of the opinion that coaches need to consider strategies & tactics for how to accomplish those goals I mentioned above. For example, if you don't plan your practices well, keep kids moving and motivated instead of just standing around waiting for something to happen, then they're not going to have as much fun or learn as much!
Jim,
I couldn't agree more. You are a kindred spirit. I have a work in progress site (very home grown site) that works on what you are talking about. You can check it out here. http://www.wecoachrecbasketball.com/
I hope to get back to this site soon. I lost my momentum when the season ended last year.
Mike
Mike - Love your site! Am going to spend some more time checking it out. One of my projects this summer is to continue to build out a video wiki I started last season for the middle school basketball program I run. You can check it out here:
http://slshoops.wikispaces.com/
Maybe there's a way we can collaborate make both our sites better!
Jim,
I like where what you are doing with your site.
Yes, let's connect. Shoot (pun intended) me an email at mikewilliams.vt (at sign) gmail (dot) com. I'd love to connect.
Need to do that to avoid spammers.
Mike
Good question about youth sports.... my answer to your question is in a blog article I wrote a couple of weeks ago after my 9/10 year old baseball team won the championship. Check it out here
http://crawdaddycove.com/2009/08/13/winnings-the-goal-but-it-isnt-the-point/
-- Rob Crawford, Vice President of Red Sox Nation and youth baseball coach
Post a Comment