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Managing difference within an academy group
John Allpress looks at how to modify your coaching to meet your players’ individual needs
In any group, your players will be of varying abilities as well as varied learning styles, and will respond to you differently as well. As a coach, you can manage difference within a group in a variety of ways:
- Varied intervention strategies
- What you teach
- What you get the players to practise
- How you use different practices
- The learning and practice environments you employ (eg best with best etc.)
The aim is to ensure that all players are engaged and challenged in their learning and practice endeavours. Work must be geared to the standard of the best players in the group and the others must strive to attain that level.
However, there is no reason to assume the make-up of the group will be the same at the end of the season as it was at the beginning. That is why personalised challenges and focused deliberate practice is so vital to a player’s progress.
Things change and everybody in the group needs to feel they belong, can make progress and develop. The players in the peloton should not just be there to keep the group honest but be challenged in such a way that they can see a way to lead it. In this way, the best players, whoever they may be at the time, are always kept on their toes.
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