Coach Insurance £50?

[Big Jon]

There is one qualified UKCC Level 3 coach.
There has been (as far as I am aware) 1 pilot Level 3 course which had 4 participants.

On another topic - Maroc pay club members fees to attend level 1 and 2 courses. Yes, it is expensive but we need more coaches to help train our juniors and seniors at the regular club training sessions. Without new members we would collapse as a club (we have approx 50,000- 70,000 population in our catchment area).
If clubs are serious about coaching then it needs to become a main part of the club - and then it becomes a desirable place to be socially, (adults as well as juniors).

[graeme]

I'm a lapsed level 4. There are too many hoops to jump through to keep my qualification "licensed" - Life's too short.
is there an echo in here?

[Paul Frost]

I guess that the big question to ask is:

Do we want good quality respected coaches, who are up-to-date with the latest best practices, knowledgable in new ideas and approaches to things like nutrition, training etc. and are good at passing that knowledge on?

Or:

Risk having coaches that may have previous experience but are not up-to-date and may not be very good at passing knowledge on?

I can think of many top quality athletes that can barely string two sentences together, so they are probably not going to be very good at passing on their knowledge and skills. They may also have a very biased opinion of the "best" way to do things. What worked for them may not work for someone else.

Recording CPD (Continuing Personal Development) is the easiest way to check that coaches are keeping their knowledge up-to-date.

Coaching has dropped off British Orienteering's radar recently. It started with making the coaching director redundant, disbanding of the coaching committee and no development of a UKCC level 3 course.

The only thing they seem interested in is training non-orienteers to deliver very simple exercises in a park. One of the key reasons for this is that Sport England will not fund any coaching development for experienced orienteers.

New member retention will suffer if those new members that received all that coaching support to get them up to TD3 are then abandoned. Clubs will only thrive when there is a reasonable number of people that have developed enough to start helping out with planning and putting on events.

Jon is right in that clubs need to take some responsibility and financially support people that want to become coaches and to help the existing ones to develop further. It starts to cost more money for coaches to progress beyond level 2, the time involved and the extra assessment required mount up. So go and ask your club what financial support it provides to coaches and if it has a plan to develop members beyond TD3.

[andypat]

It would be interesting to see if there was a market for experienced orienteers to attend coaching at say £5 on a Sunday afternoon instead of, or tacked on to, events. Those of us who aren't in any sorts of squads might quite like that.

[graeme]

I guess that the big question to ask is:

Nope. The question to ask is "Is learning to teach children to run white courses the right first step into coaching."

I try to imagine EUOC/BOF's former head coach Toni Louhisola teaching 9 years olds on a white course. Or remember him stringing two sentences together. No way should he be allowed to pass a Level 1 course. (For those who don't know, Toni is a brilliant elite-level coach)

The whole scheme is built on some arse-backwards idea that teaching novices is easier than coaching elites. It isn't easier, it's just different.
Yes, I would be awful an primary school teacher

[Glucosamine]

The whole scheme is built on some arse-backwards idea that teaching novices is easier than coaching elites. It isn't easier, it's just different.

So who designed the scheme? Is the issue O-specific or extrapolated(inappropriately?) from wider coaching theory? Do other small sports (rounders since recently mentioned here?) follow the model, or have we somehow picked up something more appropriate to a much longer ladder (football?).

[SeanC]

It would be interesting to see if there was a market for experienced orienteers to attend coaching at say £5 on a Sunday afternoon instead of, or tacked on to, events. Those of us who aren't in any sorts of squads might quite like that.

DFOK have been doing this for a few years. Once or twice a year using a paid coach. Tacked on to events doesn't work as well as a dedicated coaching morning/afternoon. Initially we charged about £5 and subsidised it, but all the participants were very happy to pay the cost rate of just over £10 for quality coaching in a decent area so now we charge more and aim to break even. We make a decent day out of it with a pub/food at the end of the morning. Because we are a small club we invited people from neighbouring clubs to ensure a decent turnout. My conclusion... in the South East and probably lots of other regions there is a market for one or more paid coaches offering coaching days for intermediate/experienced orienteers in forest areas, perhaps 10-15 times a year, but clubs need to make this happen by providing such coaches with areas and equipment, and publicising the coaching. Ideally this would be organised at a regional level, do any regions do this? Perhaps there are still too many people uncomfortable with the idea of coaches earning money for their skills?

Another thing that might work is offering coaching mornings at regional events as an alternative to competing. I know this might sound a bit bonkers but lots of club members don't go to regional events and just stay local. Again this needs promotion but this could really appeal to those who don't normally go, particularly juniors who just do local leagues, and those nervious of the technical areas. All organisers need to do is let the coach have an all controls map in sufficient time, and possibly allow the coach to visit the area. Again the barrier might be the feeling that someone is making a profit out of volunteer effort, but I think we need to get over this. An "all controls coaching map" could of course be used by volunteer coaches and perhaps quite attractive if there is a good junior club squad looking for a technical area for coaching with the controls and land permissions all sorted out?

[Paul Frost]

I wasn't thinking about coaching elites.
I seem to remember that at a presentation given during the PWT in Perth, by a certain elite athlete and coach he said that he thought elites were un-coachable, what they needed was more in the way of a mentor.

There aren't that many elites so we don't need that many coaches/mentors to satisfy that demand, but we do need good coaches/teachers that can help the 1000's of orienteers at TD4/5 to get better, and we need a lot of them. So how do you sort the wheat from the chaff?

I am probably one of the most coached adult TD5 orienteers in Scotland. I have been volunteered as a pupil more times than I can remember. I've done everything from being a 6 year old on a white course up to Veteran team training. The one thing I can say with certainty is that the coaches who could string sentences together and had a good presentation style were far more effective, and I learnt more.
I've also had experienced orienteers as aspirant coaches deliver a coaching session that left me thinking I'd wasted my time.

I agree that having to coach people at TD1,2 & 3 doesn't seem very interesting when you start out. But the aim here is to learn HOW to coach and focuses on skills that many people may not have or need improving. Again, as a Guinea pig I've been amazed at how bad some people are at conveying information in a clear concise manor in a limited amount of time.

If you think of other sports:
A canoe/kayak coach wouldn't start straight out on grade 3 rapids.
Climbers wouldn't start on E6.
You need to prove that you are capable before you are trusted at higher levels.

Just because you are intelligent or have a degree doesn't automatically qualify you to be a teacher in schools, so why should being a good orienteer automatically qualify you to be a coach?

[Glucosamine]

Another thing that might work is offering coaching mornings at regional events as an alternative to competing. I know this might sound a bit bonkers but lots of club members don't go to regional events and just stay local. Again this needs promotion but this could really appeal to those who don't normally go, particularly juniors who just do local leagues, and those nervious of the technical areas. All organisers need to do is let the coach have an all controls map in sufficient time, and possibly allow the coach to visit the area. Again the barrier might be the feeling that someone is making a profit out of volunteer effort, but I think we need to get over this. An "all controls coaching map" could of course be used by volunteer coaches and perhaps quite attractive if there is a good junior club squad looking for a technical area for coaching with the controls and land permissions all sorted out?

Good to maximise bang for buck, but regional events tend to come with a premium price (and often extra petrol), hopefully for a more competitive experience. Seems hard to reconcile this with the same controls being used at the same time for training, given that a training exercise tends to have a different dynamic to races. Would a football coaching session be organised on the same pitch at the same time as a league match? Perhaps different controls, or after the race instead? The paid coach could then offer some payback by collecting the controls!