The District Associations and Major Associations within the South Island have collaboratively identified the need to pilot having coach developers assigned to the various festivals and tournaments that are held during the season. The aim is to increase the quality of the experience for both coaches and players during the festivals and tournaments. The opportunity to develop coaches involved with coaching these festival and tournament teams also allows the opportunity to embed the Balance Is Better philosophies within the team environments.
NZC Regional Coach Development Manager – South Island, Toby Doyle, comments that “Coaches and the quality of coaching is one of the major influences on whether participants enjoy themselves or not at festival or tournament events. It is great to test if a system like this helps coaches to foster an even more enjoyable experience for the players”. He adds that “It is exciting to see District Association and Major Association staff collaborating to implement this system across the South Island”.
The system the coach developers have been collaboratively working on to implement has three main touch points for coaches:
- Individual phone calls with coaches to establish relationships
- Collaborative video calls to allow coaches to get to know one another prior to the event and gain clarity around the purpose of the event they will be coaching at
- During festival/tournament support that meets the individual needs of the coaches
The consistent and aligned system is being piloted through all of the South Island Festivals and Tournaments. The learnings from the piloted system will inform decision making around how coach developers can better support coaches at festivals and tournaments moving forwards.
