I've seen various posts in other threads touching on topics to do with youth coaching, and I thought it might be interesting to have a dedicated thread
To start with, I'll quote from a very interesting post from peopleluas on the Cork Footballers thread:
"Remember when we as children played when we were young. The neighbouring children would gather together somewhere (in the city or town it might have been some green area, in the country it was often the field of some farmer parent of one of the children). We might have hurleys, and a sliotar (often lost), or a football. We might play some form of hurling, or football, or soccer, or indeed rounders, or we might play some chasing game, or whatever. And we didn't arrange by age - we just grouped up and played with whoeever we wanted to play with. And we didn't have adults schooling us on how to play better, praising us for playing well, by implication critiquing us for playing poorly - we didn't have that burden. We learned how to play, sometimes we copied skills we'd seen older players or adults use at matches or on TV. We did whatever we wanted to. And we imagined ourselves scoring for Cork. And we enjoyed it - because of whoever or whatever designed young mammals of all species to learn best by just determining their own play.
We need to supply the environment where children can self-organize themselves to do all that, so that like you said they are not sick of all the sport-schooling by the time they are 15. Supply a safe environment, and hold back on schooling them. We are failing miserably in that, and to be honest the impacts of our failure are a lot more than just whether they are good footballers or hurlers when they grow up."
I'm sympathetic to some of this. It's a great idea for youth coaching, especially with younger children (say up to the age of ten), to involve a lot of what peopleluas describes: children self-organising and playing away among themselves. But I do think we should also leave room, even when children are that young, for a little bit of 'sport-schooling' - introducing specific techniques and helping them with technical challenges (e.g., soloing in football, jab-lifting in hurling).
It's also worth keeping in mind how children acquire other skills, apart from either sports or in formal schooling. My wife teaches music, and while she does have organised play for younger children, there's a basic set of skills that are very hard to avoid teaching, and which are v hard to teach except in a structured manner (think of playing chords, or learning how to move smoothly from one chord to the next). An older child (again, ten or older, and sometimes younger) will often want to play some specific pieces, but even there it will be difficult for them to do so simply by playing in a completely unstructured way.
There are other specific things which could be said in response to peopleluas's post (e g , the changing physical environment in which children are now raised, and changing attitudes among parents). But I reckon that's enough for a first post.
To start with, I'll quote from a very interesting post from peopleluas on the Cork Footballers thread:
"Remember when we as children played when we were young. The neighbouring children would gather together somewhere (in the city or town it might have been some green area, in the country it was often the field of some farmer parent of one of the children). We might have hurleys, and a sliotar (often lost), or a football. We might play some form of hurling, or football, or soccer, or indeed rounders, or we might play some chasing game, or whatever. And we didn't arrange by age - we just grouped up and played with whoeever we wanted to play with. And we didn't have adults schooling us on how to play better, praising us for playing well, by implication critiquing us for playing poorly - we didn't have that burden. We learned how to play, sometimes we copied skills we'd seen older players or adults use at matches or on TV. We did whatever we wanted to. And we imagined ourselves scoring for Cork. And we enjoyed it - because of whoever or whatever designed young mammals of all species to learn best by just determining their own play.
We need to supply the environment where children can self-organize themselves to do all that, so that like you said they are not sick of all the sport-schooling by the time they are 15. Supply a safe environment, and hold back on schooling them. We are failing miserably in that, and to be honest the impacts of our failure are a lot more than just whether they are good footballers or hurlers when they grow up."
I'm sympathetic to some of this. It's a great idea for youth coaching, especially with younger children (say up to the age of ten), to involve a lot of what peopleluas describes: children self-organising and playing away among themselves. But I do think we should also leave room, even when children are that young, for a little bit of 'sport-schooling' - introducing specific techniques and helping them with technical challenges (e.g., soloing in football, jab-lifting in hurling).
It's also worth keeping in mind how children acquire other skills, apart from either sports or in formal schooling. My wife teaches music, and while she does have organised play for younger children, there's a basic set of skills that are very hard to avoid teaching, and which are v hard to teach except in a structured manner (think of playing chords, or learning how to move smoothly from one chord to the next). An older child (again, ten or older, and sometimes younger) will often want to play some specific pieces, but even there it will be difficult for them to do so simply by playing in a completely unstructured way.
There are other specific things which could be said in response to peopleluas's post (e g , the changing physical environment in which children are now raised, and changing attitudes among parents). But I reckon that's enough for a first post.
