How to construct a National Coaching Program

[bogota]

How to construct a National Coaching Program

I am interested in peoples ideas on the best way to construct a national program.

With a limited budget where do you think you would get the best return.

1.Build from the bottom up with grassroot programs.

2.Start from the top and focus more on your best players.

3.Combination of the two

4.More money spent on training coaches.

Any more ideas or points from anyone.

[BSharma]

Welcome Bogota.

You have asked a great question and I hope you realize that many of us have little experience of organizing a sports program so take our suggestions with a grain of salt.

Could you give us some more information about the National Coaching Program?

- I assume that you are talking about squash and not a team sport like soccer, hockey, etc.

- Is this program for India or some other country since each country has its unique problems?

- What kind of limited budget is it? Is it enough to build a grassroot program?

- Is it Government money, private money, money with some restrictions tied to it, etc?

- What time frame are you looking at before the desired results have to be shown to the sponsors?

[Dhruv]

Bhushan has, like always, asked some very important questions which are critical in how the program would be striuctured (i.e. where the money would go). esp on what kind of timeframe is under consideration and how soon do results need to appear to be seen.

I would just add that although people not have organised a national sports program (after all how many have) I know a lot have either been engaged in sport at the national level either as sportsmen, people covering the event and finally even as administrators running the games so you should get a reasonable feedback.

[BSharma]

bogota and Dhruv,

Oops, I hope that I have not given the impression that the forum members are ignorant about sports, coaching, administration, etc. We have never shied away from giving our two cents worth of advice although the information from some of the members is worth a lot more. Dhruv has correctly pointed out that we have decent former and current players and coaches, journalists, die-hard sports fans, etc in our midst.

[bogota]

It was a hypothetical question but already all your answers have been a great help in clarifiying my ideas.

Thank you ,any more ideas would be great.

[bogota]

The reason is i have always looked at this from a player or a coaches viewpoint and I would really like as many different viewpoints as possible.

The long term view or the bigger picture rather than the next tournament, or next season,

How to construct long term squash success for a country.

Namely world champs or commonwealth medals or even olympic medals

[Dhruv]

Typically if govt. funding is involved or if long term sponsors are on board (i.e. 5yrs or greater) then the best possible way to do build a program is by

1.Building from the bottom up with a semi grassroots programs. What that might mean is building up an national academy or centre of excellence if you like where you would have have some trained coaches, maybe foriegn coaches if needed. You would also spend more money on training and improving the skill set of existing coaches and physical therapists etc.

Typically you would also have a scouting program where scouts would go and watch all or atleast most of the state level championships (juniors). You would try and start out with players in the U-14 age group as the maximum benefit would probably be gained in the long term by focussing on them however if you had some very promising players who were still young for their sport you would try and incorporate them into the program as well. This would help popularize the sport and get more children playing, but unless you had the aforementioned scouting program underway this would be a waste. The scouts also have to realise what they are looking for is not good squash players but great atheletes who also play some squash. The chances of success with this type of player has been proven to be much higher. You can teach an athlete the skills to be good at a sport but you can't teach athletic ability.

You would then also be contructing a program of development for the players i.e a list of competitions that they should be playing at the various age group level leading up to their joining the pro ranks. Hopefully with enough good players making an impact from the academy of excellence, the academy can then also help some of the players with sponsorship and taking part of the early part of the pro career, but really helping your top players after a given point in time, if you have limited resources, is counter productive. (Unless you believe they are best player you will have this decade or something similar and without your support their career would be over)

The goal of a development program should really be that , develop a player with the requisite skils so that they may be able to stand on their own feet and take care of their own pro careers. The academy thus needs to have some sort of training program to help explain to the players what has worked best in the past and how one can go about managing their own career once outside the confines of the academy.

Most of the decisions though come down to resources. You might want to establish more than one academy and have a more detailed scouting program etc but if you start small and are successful you should be able to sell the success of the program to other sources of potential sponsorship. Which leads me to the fact that the program needs to have a dedicated officer who looks at bringing in more funding etc and another who makes sure that the academy is always in the news and keeps getting publicity at regular intervals etc. etc.

Basically it needs to be run like a business in the end with the coaches as the plant/floor managers and the players as the raw material and finished product, the scouts as people who source the raw material and then a management layer on top who takes care of the finances and other stuff. The business would then also produce an annual report and audited financial statements etc. which should keep it professional to some degree and also provide it with some publicity material. Ofcourse depending on how much money is out there might be duplication of functions but ideally all these functions should be run by separate persons.

[bogota]

Thanks Dhruv.

Some good info for me to work with.

Thanks for your help and ideas.

[Dhruv]

I could try and find some sort of McKinsey or BCG type report on this if you are really keen. Can't promise anything but if you are really really interested I can ask around.

PS: Everyone -- my laptop is broken so I am not on the site as often. Hopefully that will be rectified by next week.

[bogota]

I am really really interested Dhruv.

That would be excellent .

Thanks for all your help.

[Dhruv]

Bogota : Haven't forgotten about you and the search is underway