The Importance Of Coaching In A Talent Development Environment

Coaching adolescents in a talent development environment, I have selected this group as I have always wanted to coach in a talent development environment as I feel coaching and finding the next great athlete in any given sport and turning their gift into recognised talent would give me a greater sense of achievement over any winners medal you could possibly get. The skills and qualities I will concentrate on within this group are; relative age effect as this is a serious flaw in the talent development system to date, I will also look at how within a talent development scheme it is not always about winning as this is not the most effective way of producing senior success. Another quality of coaching in a talent development I will look at is

the need to develop the fundamental skills and attitudes, as these are needed to develop the sports-specific skills. The final quality I will look at is individual treatment, this is due to the different rates athletes progress and the complex dynamic of individuals.
Selection and development of talented, junior athletes is of great importance for the ever-increasing professionalism of elite sport (Vaeyens et al., 2008).

However, there is limited evidence to suggests that development pathways are efficient at producing elite adult athletes (Vaeyens et al., 2009). The retention of athletes making it through from junior development pathways has ranged from 28.1%-55.6% (McCarthy & Collins, 2014), although this definition of retention can be misleading as junior squads are usually larger than the senior squads, meaning 100% retention is more often than not impossible. There are various factors which can affect athlete dropout and development pathway efficiency, these are injury, athletes moving out of the sport or the athlete being dropped from the development

pathway.
Relative age effect is when the selection of athletes is age biased and is evident in many sporting codes and represents a key factor in pathway inefficiency (Till et al., 2010). This is because adolescent athletes who are older are more likely to be physically more mature than younger athletes and have a greater physical stature, physiological capacities, motor control and cognitive aptitude (Armstrong, 2007). These attributes give the older athlete a distinct advantage against a younger athlete with their performance in an age-restricted competition that is used in the respective development pathway (Gil et al., 2013). Despite a suggested relationship between relative age effect and development pathway efficiency, there is no observation between both that exists across any sporting code.
Appropriate development must be prioritized over the common drive for early “success”, where the selection and coaching is solely focused on winning (Abbot et al., 2002). As it is well documented the majority of those who become successful elite athletes didn’t start as equally talented youth performers. This is one of the main reasons why a focus on early success and all the coaching and selection issues this brings is simply not the most effective or ethical way of producing senior success. Bloom (1985) stated “even in retrospect, we do not believe that the perfecting of aptitude tests or other predictive instruments would enable us to predict high-level potential talent at this stage”. Effective processes highlight the need for systematic development of fundamental physical and movement skills for example catching and balance (Moore et al., 1998) and fundamental attitudes and mental skills, these include commitment and persistence (Gould et al., 2002). These seem to be a requirement to develop more sport-specific skills and continued progress through the transitions associated with achieving excellence (Van Rossum, 2001).
There appears to be a need for ongoing and individual development opportunities due to the complex dynamic of individuals, their progress and success (Moore et al., 1998). This is because of the unpredictable nature of an individual’s development in numerous aspects, not least physically and mentally (Ackland & Blanksby, 1996). Individual treatment from a coach is vital for effective change in behaviour within many aspects of life (Prochaska et al., 1992) with factors such as goal-setting, review and reinforcement appear to be important in encouraging this change process (Locke et al., 1985).
When coaching adolescents in a talent development environment you must consider a number of things as without the right coaching the athletes may never reach their true potential or even drop out as they may feel they are not good enough, or have lost their enjoyment of the specific sport.

One of the main things as a coach of this group you have to consider is how much more development has their body got to go through, for example when picking which athletes get into the talent development program you have to think about when they were born as someone who was born in the first quarter of the year are more likely to be physically mature than an athlete who was born in the fourth quarter, giving them distinct advantages meaning you may miss an athlete with a greater potential due to them being younger and not developing yet. Another thing a coach must do when coaching this group is not to centre everything around winning as they are there to develop the athletes into elite senior athletes and if they focus solely on winning they will not be putting the time and effort into developing other areas of the athlete, for example their mental state, as if they do not have the right frame of mind they can never truly reach their full potential as if they do not have good commitment they will end up probably dropping out of the sport all together and if they do not have persistence they will give up any time a competition or match gets too hard for them to cope with. You also need to

be a good role model and like a father figure when coaching adolescents as the athletes bodies are still not fully developed and are changing all the time, the coach needs to be understanding and must realise at this stage in the athletes lives they are going to progress at different rates and will be successful at different times, the best way to do this is by setting different athletes different goals and giving the athletes a monthly review so they know how they are progressing and what areas they need to work on or improve within the next month.