Is Your Club Right For Your Child?

There is rarely a right or wrong answer to this, however there are some considerations which are important, as well as some red flags.

Choosing the right club is important and difficult. And the right answer at one moment might be different in six months.

Below are some considerations which will help you make a decision on what is right for your family.

Let's start with your own OBSERVATIONS:

• Do you watch other teams at the club? Not from a special visit, but actually observe other coaches and teams while you are there with your child?
• This should give you a sense of the 'club' as a whole, of what sort of coaching is acceptable and what sort of behaviour of coaches and managers is acceptable.
• This is important to make an informed decision about the club as a whole, not just how your child is treated by their coach on a day to day basis
• Does your child want to, and is she capable of, playing at college? Be realistic. Is it a dream, is it just a matter of time, or is it not a factor at all?
• knowing this will help ensure you select a club which is focussed more on providing a great development environment for children, than winning
• Do you want to win more than your child does? The answer to this is probably yes, and you should be aware of this. There has been research done on why children leave sport for over half a century and winning is never in the top 5 reasons for children.

Next is CONSIDERATIONS:

Clubs are made up of three things, and the last one is the least important: Management, Coaching and Facilities.

Management

• Are club directors at trainings, observing the coaches?
• Do you think they have a good sense of what is happening with each team?
• Do you know them well enough to say hi and chat, and ask them their opinion on how things are going?
• Does the club consider the challenges and complexities of family life when setting rules and guidelines?

Coaching

• Does your coach run good sessions based on good teaching/learning methodology?
• This is a massive component of evaluation and I have added a footnote on what 'Good Session' is at the end of this post [1]
• Does your coach communicate effectively with the players?
• good communication requires asking questions and listening to answers in order to understand what the players are interpreting from the instructions given
• Do players get to learn all parts of the game
• this is essential as children develop and grow and need to know about all aspects of game play to be able to adapt to other roles in the future
• Does your coach seem to know anything about coaching children? If not is anyone you can observe teaching them this?
• Does your coach seem to know anything about the game? If not is anyone you can observe teaching them this?
• Does the coach allow any sort of bullying or socially negative behaviour? If they do and you have discussed this with club management, are they improving?

Lastly, these could be RED FLAGS:

• Does the club use the same 'systems' throughout? Be cautious of this as the primary benefit of this structure is that it looks good for the club. The players, should they play in other environments, will need to adapt to various different systems and learning how to do this is important.
• Does the club seem to use the same 'techniques' throughout? This is probably a good thing, assuming what they are teaching is appropriate. There is no 'perfect' technique, but there are 1,000s of variations which will limit the development of the player
• Does the coach talk about the players doing things for them? This indicates the coach is placing more emphasis on their own success than the success of the children they are coaching.
• Does the club seem to allow aggressive and/or confrontational coaching? Coaches in clubs are learning and will make mistakes but a good club will be pulling these coaches aside and helping evolve their coaching to be more effective.

In the end, there is no perfect club. And finding the right one/s is a very tough job. Good luck!

[1] Good Session (based on a 1hr duration) ^

• 5 min warmup (with balls and relevant movement to help develop ball tracking)
• 15 min technical focus (focus is on learning technical components of a particular skill)
• 20 min skill focus (connected drills which put the previous technical development into game situations). Primarily this means doing the skill that happens before and after. So if the skill was setting, these drills will be setting from a pass/free/down to a setter who hits (against a block). These drills can look largely like games
• 15 min game play (drills which replicate game flow with different focusses and extra balls). These drills should look largely like games
• 5 min cool down  (important for down regulation especially with evening practice)