Coach development from a distance: Staying sharp while staying away during quarantine periods

Firstly, I hope this blog post finds you, your family and friends in good health; this is strange times and new territory for us all and I hope we can follow the advice of health professionals and leaders of our countries to “flatten the curve” and keep our communities safe and well, including all our athletes, coaches and administrators involved in our respective sports. Within Australia, like many other countries effected by the COVID-19 virus, most sports at most levels have been postponed at the start or crucial stages of their varying seasons. Akin to reports from US via New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/sports/coronavirus-canceled-youth-sports.html), age grade athletes across Australia and other countries have been sent to the sidelines as communities across the globe follow best advice from our health professionals:

“Little League baseball has shut down. Youth lacrosse and soccer clubs have suspended their seasons. Travel teams across all sports have been grounded. The coronavirus pandemic has done what generations of overbearing parents and coaches have failed to do: send millions of boys and girls to the sideline.

The impact of the emerging health crisis was felt immediately at the high school level as state championships in basketball, ice hockey and wrestling were canceled from Montana to New Jersey.

Hearts were broken. Tears were shed.”

So, in this unfamiliar territory of postponed competitions, sporting organisations on lock-down and priorities of community wide heath and welfare taking precedence over sporting involvement and athletic achievement, what can we do as coaches to continue to develop our craft and maintain our athlete’s interest and development? As we are all now athlete-centred coaches, let’s start by addressing what our players or athletes may be missing from being placed in quarantine. In times where joy and happiness are hard to come across, what elements from sport did offer fun to our athletes and how can we replicate them to both engage our players during a difficult period and ensure they are returning enthusiastic and developed as an individual on our return?

Findings from my current research mirror elements of Visek’s research which suggests high effort, positive coach relationships and challenging environments promoting self development and learning is recognised as fun in HP atmospheres. Research completed by Visek and others in 2015, while investigating for a theoretical framework of fun for age grade athletes participating in organised sport, the research involving athletes ages up to 19 years old found determinants or frequently coded answers such as Trying hard (Setting and achieving goals, Being strong and confident, Competing), Positive Coaching (When a coach encourages or treats players with respect, A coach who knows a lot about the sport) and Learning and improving (Being challenged to improve and get better at your sport, Learning from mistakes and/or new skills) as being highly important and frequent answers (Visek et al., 2015). Therefore, it could be considered that Australian athletes such as the highly driven players questioned are gaining fun and/or enjoyment as being part of high-performance atmosphere as many of the sport specific personal strivings offered from players involve similar language to determinants mentioned within Visek’s research. This research would also support my previous suggestions that players involved and committed to high performance programs within organised sport are habitually focused on positively acting towards attaining goals with an individual emphasis or emphasis on personal success, accomplishment and competing with standard of excellence or mastery of environment as opposed to collective goals or meaningful connections, with team rituals and close friendships being less important or sought after within sporting contexts (Visek et al., 2015).

So what does this look like working remotely with our modern day players and athletes? How do we create positive learning opportunities with a tint of collaborative competition? Fortunately, we live in 2020 and while we are social animals, needing interaction and connectedness to others, this can be created in different forms. Like many videos circulating the internet, offer creative challenges to be video recorded and shared amongst your groups. Edging around SDT principles, encourage player autonomy, competency and relatedness by getting them to create and share the challenges amongst their squads and teammates whilst nominating different players to test and expand their skill base. Studies have shown that athlete satisfaction is related to the degree to which athletes understand their role and responsibilities within interactive sports teams. (Eys, 2007). With this in mind, essentially encourage your players to communicate, collaborate and challenge each other to ensure they still feel valued and have purpose throughout this difficult period.

What can we do as coaches or coaching groups to test and expand our knowledge base? As we know, the challenge of successful coaching is acknowledging social interactive dilemmas within individual and team goal setting and development, offering suitable scenarios and choices with all members’ involvement and collaboratively dealing with matters as opposed to eradicating them. The social distancing frameworks shall certainly challenge even the most connected coaches!! Past research by Mageau and Vallerand regards the “actions of coaches as (possibly) the most critical motivational influences within sport setting”. Coaching should be recognised as an educational dynamic relationship, where the coach can satisfy player’s goals and development but both sides have an investment of will capital, where human initiative and intentionality are both dedicated to show commitment towards goals and relationships. The role of performance coach for specialising athletes is highly important; coaches are “preparing athletes for consistent high-level competitive performance” (Côté, 2009a) through effective tactics such as integration of professional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal knowledge and developing player’s specific competence, confidence, connection, and character needs on regular basis. As per health guidelines, now is the time to test our interpersonal skills and comminication styles, recognising the areas devoid of our involved sports technical and tactical aspects whilst ensuring we are being empathetic, positive and effectual in our communication with our isolated athletes.

How can we as coaches sharpen our sword, improve our craft and continue to build on coach-athlete relationships while operating remotely and without other sports to watch or review? Jowett identified the 3+1 Cs (closeness, commitment, complementary and co-orientation) coach-athlete relationship model; this research and analysis revealed the importance of closeness as defined in terms of mutual trust and respect, commitment in terms of developing a partnership that is thought to be close and lasting, as well as willing and motivating, and complementary in terms of working well together while understanding the specific roles each has to take. Moreover, the analysis highlighted that open channels of communication forged a degree of feeling and being co-oriented in terms of viewing the relationship and the broader issues associated with it. The findings highlighted the central role of the coaching relationship while its quality and nature was effectively discerned using the 3+1 Cs model. I believe this unfortunate scenario can hopefully offer coaches a chance to develop closeness, commitment and complementary aspects to their athlete relationships by assisting players ways to identify training ideas and assistance for how to think and act in sporting and life contexts in future as opposed to offering solutions on and off the field. My beliefs are echoed in past research including investigations by Mageau and Vallerand (2003); they believe coaches need to offer players opportunity for choice, acknowledge player feelings and perspective, limit controlling behaviours while valuing initiative, problem solving and involvement in decision making (Mageau, 2003) which shall ultimately develop better athletes and better people.

Coaches; I stress, please be adaptable and complementary as your age grade players and athletes need your support more than ever!! People, personalities and environments shall change; I doubt many coaches had these few months factored into their season plan! Therefore, take this time to change and adapt your coaching methodologies. Start by asking questions of yourself and your athletes, understanding the answers and whom they’re coming from; this shall give you a clearer snapshot for your athletes you shall see again later this year but give you better techniques for years to come, remembering coaching is cyclical and theories and techniques need to be continually addressed and worked on. Be willing to change ideas or structures to match what your athletes or players need today; be reflective and flexible to change to what they need tomorrow.