Following a new path

An article by Stephen Pritchard    No Comments

I’ve been raising my expectations based on my Learning Nutrition experiences.  As such, I chose to hand more responsibility for the content of one of my community junior clubs sessions to the learners.  This session is weekly and has the youngest players of my regular work.

I had 8 players, and wanted them to split into two groups.  I asked them to do so and ended up with two groups of three and a two.  They had chosen a time limit of 10 seconds to arrange themselves as I wanted so I counted down out loud and was really pleased when one pair chose to separate and each join a group in which they felt less comfortable initially in order to achieve their self set target.  These two were publicly praised for making the decision to help the rest of the group.  More Complex Carbs.

Once in groups, the task was explained – a relay type race collecting and returning shuttles.  Off they went.  One group got it spot on and the other was mayhem, to the point where they’d dropped off the comfort stretch panic curve and were stood still waiting for me to tell them what order to go in, and who should do what.  Previously I would have done so, and one of the young leaders working with me was itching to do this, but I held him back.  The successful group were praised for their organisation and teamwork.  To the group that hit meltdown, I simply said that I knew they could do it this time, and set them all off again.  Through ignoring the “winners” of each race and praising the visible efforts to organise one another and work as a team a stage was reached where both groups were working successfully.

Once this co-operative environment was established, I allowed the group to guide the rest of the session by letting them chose the activities, still from a selection provided by me.  The result was that practices I had selected were used in a way I had not intended.  I wanted the focus to be upon developing throwing technique.  However, through their actions the learners created a situation where the practices instead developed an awareness of space as they moved from co-operative to competitive.

This has since made me think.  I’ve been spending a lot of time with older more experienced players trying to make them use space more effectively, but am finding it hard to change their learned behaviours and responses in high pressure (match) situations.  Perhaps these younger players have started themselves down a path which will avoid this barrier in the future?  I’ll let you know in a few years.