Coaching school age children in any sport can be pretty frustrating sometimes even for those individuals who really enjoy being around kids.
And frustration can no doubt get the best of us, especially when kids in elementary school are involved.
Rather than thinking about those frustrating moments and think of some ways to make your coaching job work for you and the kids.
After all, coaching can be a very rewarding experience, which is easy to do when you use three simple tools.
And the best thing is none of these tools will cost you anything but a little bit of your time.
- Enlist a Helper - One of the best things you can do, beginning the very first day of meeting with your team, is enlist a helper.
This will not only give you a helping hand in passing out information, distributing equipment, and handling other tasks but will also put you on a certain level with the children.
This may make the children listen to you much better and may make them even respect you a little bit more.
If you are going to use helpers everyday, you will want to keep an accurate schedule of rotation so no child ends up feeling left out.
Also be sure you will meet enough to use each child as a helper, otherwise you will want to pair up or make some other similar arrangements.
- Have Fun - One surefire way to make your coaching job work and make it better for both you and the children is by having fun.
When young children play sports, fun is exactly what they are there for and winning takes a back seat.
To be sure, you want to begin to teach school age children about the basics of whatever sport they are playing and to know the team goal is winning, but that it is not the end of the world when you lose either.
Good sportsmanship can be taught by making the game fun at an early age.
- Communicate with Parents Using Conferencing - Finally, you will want to keep the parents involved, particularly with older school age children.
This can be done with conferencing.
Conference calling programs, which can be downloaded online for free, are a great way to keep parents informed of the progress their child is making in the sport they are playing.
Plan to have either weekly or monthly conference calls during which you can discuss progress as well as areas that need work.
Having a weekly conference call will allow you to enlist the help of the parent in trying to improve certain skills which is what everybody wants.
And a conference call will allow parents to speak about any issues as well.
Coaching should be a rewarding experience, but working with children can be difficult at times.
Communicate with parents through conference calling and have fun with the kids, and it should all go over fairly smoothly in the end.