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By Andrew Voerman
ASK A secondary school student who they admire more – Dan Carter or Steve Hansen – and you’ll only get one answer.
Everyone wants to be the star – scoring the winning try, shooting the winning goal or making the winning basket – and the men and women on the sidelines tend to get overlooked.
Who wants to be a coach?It would appear quite a few
young Cantabrians, if the turnout at a coaching course at Pioneer Stadium last Friday is anything to go by. The event was run by School Sport Canterbury, in conjunction with Sport Canterbury and local sporting organisations.
One hundred and thirty five students took part, the highest attendance in the five years the event has been held.
All of them have signed on to coach teams of younger players, and they were there to receive sport-specific instruction from experienced coaches, who will then follow up with them during the season.
Under grey, drizzly skies, Can-terbury Hockey’s Jon O’Haire led the hockey session.
O’Haire is a coaching veteran. After a playing career which saw him represent the United States, he has taken on various roles, most recently as an assistant coach
at Ohio State University.He instructs the gathered stu-
dents:“Tell me how you hold a stick.”It’s a question none of them
have had to contemplate in a while – holding a stick is second nature to them – but they manage
to cough up an answer.If they didn’t before, they now
know exactly what they’ve let themselves in for.
When you’re coaching young players, you have to start with the basics.
O’Haire gets five of the students
to dribble around some cones, while taking care not to run into each other.
It’s a drill designed to practise ball control and awareness.
He calls for them to stop, and asks the rest of the group to give feedback.
BACK TO BASICS: 135 students from Canterbury secondary schools took part in a coaching course at Pioneer Stadium last Friday.
Students learn how to become
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One student says the players were looking down at the ball too much, and O’Haire pulls him up.
“We talked about wanting to start with positive feedback. Let’s give them two things they did well. Start with those two things and then we can go at them on the things they can do better.”
Across the other side of the sta-dium, in the corner of a greasy field, Kim Browne from Canterbury Rug-by is running through a drill that fo-cuses on proper tackling technique.
The students are sat on their knees in pairs, facing one another.
It’s a bit weird, and a few of them start to giggle
It’s almost like being back in pri-mary school – which is precisely the point.
“Wrap your partner up and roll them gently on the ground,” instructs Browne.
A student yells that his partner isn’t tackling properly, and Browne seizes on it as a teachable moment.
“Matt said the other guy can’t tackle. Use peer feedback in your coaching. What I mean is the per-son getting tackled can say what-ever he wants, because then when it’s his turn, he has to do it better,” says Browne.
Browne’s aim was to leave the stu-dents with an understanding of why kids play sport:
“The main driving factor is that
they want to enjoy themselves and want to be with their mates.”
Inside the stadium, Netball New Zealand’s Jen Hooper is keeping things fun.
She says they’ve learnt that using games instead of drills is a big help with younger players.
“Instead of making them stand there and do 50 passes, what we en-courage is to still do that, but to do it in a game-like situation,” she says.
The students have been split into groups, and each of them has to run a mock training-session.
The first group takes to the floor, and a girl steps forward.
“Good game on Saturday,” says one of the girls, slipping into the role of coach, “now be quiet and listen.”
The rest of the girls laugh – indulg-ing one’s authoritarian side is defi-nitely a benefit of being a coach.
Downstairs, badminton, basket-ball and football are sharing the crowded gym.
Canterbury Basketball community coach James Lissaman, who has a crowd of 40 students hanging on his every word, is a walking example of where coaching can take you.
He spent time on scholarship at In-diana State University in the United States, where he completed a masters degree and gained invaluable coach-ing experience.
It’s a familiar road for Canterbury basketballers, with several having
done the programme in the past, and another set to join them this year.
Jules Schwalger-Smith started coaching in high school, and after completing his Bachelor of Sport Coaching degree at Canterbury Uni-versity, he got talking to Lissaman about what options were available to him.
Lissaman suggested tossing his name in the hat at Indiana State, and
now he has a scholarship as well.Schwalger-Smith says coaching is
a way to embrace his passion for the sport.
“One of my strong beliefs is that you do what you love, and try and turn what you love into a job,” he says
His first love is playing basketball, but with so few opportunities avail-able to make it as a player, coaching’s the next best thing.
Sport Canterbury coaching advi-sor Pat Berwick agrees: “Not every-one’s going to go on to be a top class players, but you can slide across and help in other ways and be as equally as achieving.”
‘Being a coach, you develop so many skills, skills which have very good applications in jobs and work – leadership, managing people, com-munication – there’s a huge amount you learn in that role,” she said.
Secondary School Sport Canter-bury assistant regional sports direc-tor Angelina King says the connec-tions the course sets up are key: “The ongoing support and guidance of the coaches is the vital part, so the kids carry on into the future.”
It’s clear Friday’s session was mere-ly the start of what will be a long road ahead.
Some will fall by the wayside, but there will be others who embrace the opportunity.
As the session comes to an end, a group of students from Riccarton High School are sat in the corner of a room.
They took their first hock-ey training the night before, butnone of them are particularly keen to talk about it, which is fair enough.
It was only the first of many, and it was bound to be a bit of a mess.
By the end of the season, you’d bet their feelings will have changed.
coaches of the future
DO AS I SAY: Canterbury Hockey community manager Jon O’Haire takes some budding secondary school hockey coaches through a drill. PHOTOS: GEOFF SLOAN
Wednesday april 16 2014The Star 43read us online 24/7 at christchurchstar.co.nz
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