7. Coach Support Skills & Strategies
On weekend two we talked about Coach Support, and looked at the Coach Wall of Support, developed by Hayley Harrison1, which noted a few of the ways we can support coaches, which is color-coded by how much involvement of a Coach Developer is required.
We held a little workshop to draw up a prospective wall of support for our NGB (National Governing Body), and this was my crack at it for Volleyball in Ireland:
If I use Hayley’s work to map this wall to novice, intermediate, and expert (or high performance) coaches, it looks a little like this:
Novice coaches have been coaching 0-2 years, intermediate 3-15 years, and experts have been coaching for more than 10 years and might be working at the international level.
What I Do Well
I think, especially after this Coach Developer Course, I can help with all of the yellow bricks, point coaches in the right direction for the pink blocks, and help get expert resources for coaches, can mentor coaches or facilitate mentoring for them, and even help them conduct their own research project.
What I Could Improve
For some of the other pieces, like arranging coaching exchanges and pushing folks into seminars/webinars, I think I just need to corral the resources I’m in contact with to help those things happen. It’s one of my favorite things about the volleyball community — we have and have had such high profile, gifted and giving coaches like John Kessel, Terry Liskevych, Jim Stone, Terry Pettit, Joel Dearing, Tom Tait, Russ Rose, John Dunning, Kiattipong Radchatagriengkai, Manù Benelli, Marco Mencarelli, Joe Trinsey, Alessandro Lodi, Sam Shweisky, Richard Gary, Graham Bell, Ciro Zoratti, and so many more that it fosters a culture of sharing and openness. I love that, even though I’m not best buds with many of those folks, they’re usually not more than an email or phone call away, and so willing to help complete strangers.
Coach profiling
To be able to support coaches we need to have an idea of what their level is, with whom they’re dealing, how proactive they’ve been about seeking out help or education in the past. There’s no sense teaching the 5-1 offense to someone who has just started coaching, has no experience with volleyball, and who is coaching U12s in Ireland playing with a Mikasa Lite over a piece of tape strung across the hall.
Jim showed us an example that Hayley, author of the original Wall of Support, created as a profiling tool for coaches, and I’ve mocked up something I might use on an iPad:
The goal is to capture their coaching experience, any qualifications they might have, and in what role (assistant coach, only coach, head coach, specialist coach, &c.), and the athletes they work with: their age range, level, and how many times a week.
Here’s what a sample might look like for me:
Of course, I’d probably be better off just following a simpler, hand-written table to capture all this. But I really love this tool (hand-written or “AI”-driven app/spreadsheet), and I’ve never formally done this before, profiling the folks with whom I’m working. But it is definitely a fun new tool to add to the tool belt. It’ll help make any supports I deliver or suggest for coaches that much more valuable if they’re level and age appropriate. “Meet them where they’re at,” as an innumerable number of wise coaches I’ve met have said.