Employability

Level 4 Festival Mentoring :

During week 29 I provided feedback and mentoring for the level 4 sports coaching students. This consisted of observing the level 4 group deliver 40 minute session to students aged between 12 and 14 years old. The session was for striking a fielding, with aims to show correct use of technique and tactical awareness for shot selection as well as find spaces.

My role during this was to analyse the session plan and give any pre instruction I believe could have assisted them in the delivery of the session. The feedback we derived from the initial view of the session plan was that the session objectives stated they would use the ‘correct technique according to the NGB’ however no where in the session did they write what the correct technique was and how it should be taught. Therefore in the session we heard lots of praise for ‘good technique’ but not stating what that was or how to was used. furthermore within the session plan I believed that the expected physical and psychological characteristics for the participants were not specific enough for the age and stage of development and therefore they should have tried to relate this a theory or model. For example the Composite youth development model  (Lloyd & Oliver, 2015).

After this I observed the running of the session making notes on coaching behaviours, tactical instruction, engagement and how I believed the session went as a whole. During the session you could see the lack buy in from a lot of the participants, are feedback towards this was to have less time talking and create a session or games where you have more people engaged at one point to avoid people standing around. However the sport this level 4 group were trying (cricket) was difficult to run as of the lack of space provided it meant that they weren’t able to create multiple smaller groups and spread them out more. which was something they brought up after the session.

Collaborative Online learning DUT

This year we were given the opportunity to work with Durban University. where we worked with the first year Sports Coaching students through Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). During the sessions we were able to Skype call the other students and provide feedback on session plans they had made for an upcoming multi-sports festiva, for a specific age and stage of development.

COIL session:

The Durban University students had made a session plan for 8-10 year olds based around Locomotion and Object control. During our talk it became very clear that the students lacked depth in the planning, and didn’t really have much reasoning for why they were doing things. We were able to help with these session plans and develop the ideas. Key initial speaking points were how they could increase participant engagement and how we can use challenge point to make the session suitable for strugglers and strivers and how we can increase enjoyment through playing games for each of the individuals.

In the session plans we noticed that there wasn’t much/ if any talk of coaching behaviours. So we asked what coaching behaviours they planned to use and how they were going to use them. The students said they would use and instruction and be very descriptive. We then asked them what they would do if the participants didn’t understand and suggested they used things such as demonstration, this could be done by on elf the coaches or even a participants who understands, this would also increase the player engagement. Looking back at this though we should have used questioning so they were able to generate this answer themselves rather than use giving it to them. This would have showed a greater understanding.

I found this experience very helpful and I believe it will make me more employable in the future as it gave me the opportunity to be able work with a different cultures, and increase my problem solving skills. Also I found describing coaching behaviours, and how to make session plans in better detail enabled me to gather a better understand myself as I had to be able to explain it someone else. It has also helped me as a coach with provide feedback and how to do so best.

ECB Level 2 Cricket Coaching certificate (young children and adults)

This year I decided, that the best way for me to increase my knowledge as a coach and gain more qualifications to allow me to work at different levels and also a chance to revive paid work that I would complete my Level 2 cricket coaching. This consisted of a 4 day course with full on days and plenty of online learning as well.

Sadly I was only able to complete the first 2 days of the course as the final two days have had to be postponed due to the current situation (Covid-19). However the first two days were a great insight and mainly focused on the core principles from the ECB. The layout of the course was very practical and there was limited time sat down which suited me very nicely. The mentors there believe it was best to learn by actual practice. They split us into small groups and gave use different scenarios to try coach or make a plan for that a lot of us hadn’t done before. we would then have high amounts of discussion on how these went and what we should be doing an what we did well.

I look forward to being able to complete this I believe it will massively assist me as a coach, student and also give me a chance to get greater coaching oppurtunities