The Youth Sports Coaching Guide

The Youth Sports Coaching Guide contains the advice every coach wishes they had been given when they first started. Written by a father of four with coaching experience spanning three decades, the book reads like a down-to-earth conversation with someone who has been in the youth sports coaching trenches. The book covers every aspect of navigating the twenty-first century youth sports coaching arena. The book travels from the logistics of team selection and practice itineraries to the interpersonal complexities of working with players, parents, other coaches and officials. The book challenges coaches to look at their own motivations and relationships and to have awareness of their actions and words. The Youth Sports Coaching Guide is divided into six sections: • Coaching Essentials: Eight guiding principles every coach needs to know to lead a team with integrity, hard work and fun. • Building the Team: Strategies and tips for choosing assistants, drafting players, running tryouts, the hard decisions of selecting players and the tough discussions that follow. • Practices: Designing and running practices with an emphasis on how to teach and speak to children. • Parents: Communication advice from the mundane to the ultra-sensitive. Includes a special section for coaches for when youth sports goes off the rails of the Crazy Train. • Games: Real-life examples on how to prepare for games and to coach in the heat of the moment, win or lose. • Wrapping up the Season: Describes different ways to cap off the season on a positive and fun note. Whether you are a new coach or someone who has been at it for years, The Youth Sports Coaching Guide is sure to inspire and drive you to have a more positive experience coaching the kids.

This book guides sport coaches, parents and administrators in creating a caring and task-involving sport climate that helps athletes perform their best and have an enjoyable and meaningful sport experience. It introduces the concept of a caring and task-involving climate and provides a "how to" guide to creating this climate in sport. Firstly, this guide introduces the caring and task-involving climate and summarizes research highlighting its many benefits. Secondly, the five features of this climate are presented along with the reflective exercises for developing them within a team. Coaches will see strategies in action, sample conversations, and a variety of ways to implement the features of a caring and task-involving experience. By describing how it may be implemented and methods for overcoming possible challenges, this book finally highlights how parents and sport administrators can support the creation and preservation of caring and task-involving climates. By helping teams develop caring climates that optimize athletes’ sport experience and performance, this book is essential reading for coaches, sport administrators, parents, and sport psychology practitioners. It will also be of great interest to those who have minimal training in sport psychology, but who are involved in sport at many levels, such as youth and high school.

From research that has taken place on youth sports, to the structure you should use when starting your team, and the importance of winning, this book gives you valuable information for you as a coach. A coach will learn the science of how a player learns and techniques to be used to increase motivation. The best coaches are the best teachers and this book gives coaches the most important tricks that great teachers use.

In To Be a Better Coach: A Guide for the Youth Sport Coach and Coach Developer, Pete Van Mullem and Lori Gano-Overway combine hands-on experience and comprehensive research to offer coaches and coach developers concrete, practical suggestions to improve coaching performance in youth sports. To Be a Better Coach shares common and best practices in coaching, such as providing a safe sport environment, engaging in ethical practices, creating a positive and inclusive environment, building relationships with all stakeholders, and developing leadership and motivational skills. Each chapter explains the skills and guidelines needed to develop as a youth coach in that specific area, followed by examples of real-world scenarios from practicing coaches. In addition, each chapter includes useful resources and practical strategies for the development of coaches. With the continued rise in youth sports, the need for trained and qualified coaches is growing. Using an applied approach, To Be a Better Coach is a needed guide for youth sport coaches and coach developers working in community youth sport programs, interscholastic sport, and private youth sport organizations.

This handbook was generated by a survey of the specific needs of the coaching community serving young children as athletic coaches. The survey revealed a need for information that addresses the needs of beginning level volunteer coaches. The first section discusses the benefits of competitive sports for children and youth and the role of the youth sports coach. In the second section, the ways children grow and develop are considered with guidelines offered for selecting skills to be taught, rules and strategies, and preventing athletic injuries. Goalsetting, motivating, and teaching values and sportsmanship are included in this section as well as suggestions on how to analyze sport skills. Practical advice is offered in the third section on planning, practicing, running competitions, and dealing with parents. The final section offers information on emergency procedures, legal liabilities, sports for disabled children, and co-ed competition. Program evaluation procedures are also discussed in this section. (JD)

As a youth sports volunteer, you should get used to wearing many hats, for you'll be not just a coach, but also a teacher, friend, and confidant. Coaching can be rewarding, but if you venture into the season unprepared, the role can be a frustrating one. Enter Your First Coaching Book. Created by The National Alliance For Youth Sports, it provides valuable tips on how to encourage fun and good sportsmanship, maximize basic skill development, deal with inappropriate behavior from players and parents, and prevent injuries by maintaining high safety standards. Whether you're a first-year coach or a seasoned veteran, the children on your team will remember you and their sports experience for the rest of their lives. Your First Coaching Book will help ensure that these memories are happy ones.

Contains techniques that intend to bring enjoyment back to athletic games for all--athletes, parents, and coaches. Using his coaching experience, personal stories, and analysis of the teaching methods of all the greats in coaching, the author suggests the answers.

Today, more than 68 million children and adolescents participate in sport programs in the United States. Yet despite the growth and popularity of highly-organized athletic competition, controversy still swirls around the role that adults, particularly coaches, play in the world of youth sports. Coaches not only occupy a critical leadership position in the athletic setting, but their influence can extend into other areas of life as well. Sport Psychology for Youth Coaches is a practical “how-to” guide that helps coaches use their leadership role to achieve optimal benefits for young athletes, both on and off the field/court.It is designed to help coaches create rewarding experiences for young athletes and provides specific behavioral guidelines that have proven to have positive, and lasting, effects. The authors address a wide range of everyday concerns including motivation, stress reduction, psychological skills, relations with parents, legal responsibilities, and other areas of importance to both coaches and athletes. Using clear examples and real stories, they help coaches hone their own skills so they can bring out the best in their young competitors – in sports and in life. No coach should be without this essential guide, whose principles have been successfully applied and tested on thousands of coaches around the world.