We discussed ‘what do children see as success?’ – answers include ‘having fun’, ‘getting better at football’, ‘scoring a goal’, ‘winning a match’ and ‘making friends’. We also considered what we, as coaches, see as success. Children having fun, coming back next week (and next year), trying their best, developing important life skills (confidence/resilience etc.) and showing respect to all, are all things that we love to see.
What do you see as success?
I have considered this question many times over the years. The most common question that can be asked by Mum or Dad is ‘did you win?’ Is this indicative of success? Another common one is ‘Did you score?’ but ‘did you set up a goal?’ or ‘did you stop a goal’ could be even better questions. It is an interesting process to write down what success looks like to you. A couple more ideas could be, “did you play well” and “what did you do that helped you play well?”
We feel we are running a successful club at grassroots level but want to be even more successful. There are many ways we can improve – one way is for us to provide you with more regular information about our coaching ethos. We aim to create a safe environment where children can have fun, develop as individuals, learn from mistakes and feel empowered.
Thanks to Andy Edwards for his insight into success, at Soccer Shooters our success criteria is based around the individual.
For us to understand what success to the individual is, we need to know them first of all. That then enables us to determine some success criteria for them. This could be a purely technical based goal but we also like to refer to our England DNA and set goals around psychological and social corners. We need to help the players look internally for success not externally or judge themselves and compare with the ability of others.
This is the time of year where awards ceremonies are taking place. Be aware of the pearls of the award ceremony. There will be kids going home devastated to not have been the player of the year or win an award. We would suggest a token gift for each kid that has attended the club, this could be a small medal for everyone, or if you are as proactive as our Coach Beth Clatworthy is you could make some individual FUT FIFA cards. You will need a photo of each player to make the cards. The players loved these and since everyone got 99 for all abilities they were pretty pleased with themselves. This does take time and money so if you have a coach or a volunteer as dedicated to making the player feel special like Beth does go for it, the players do recognise the effort and it is a great way to create a bond and trust between the players and coaches.