Whether you're the volunteer coach of a kids' soccer team or a high performance coach working with elite athletes, there is always more to learn and to pass on. Coaching is about sharing knowledge and experience, making sport fun and helping athletes to reach their potential. Coaches help make sport happen in New Zealand.
Coach development is based on continuous improvement through the increasingly effective integration of coaching skills, knowledge and understandings in coaching
The principles for coach development reflect those of the New Zealand Coaching Strategy;
Ownership - coach development will be owned by coaches and those responsible for supporting coaches. National Sport Organisations (NSOs) will be primarily responsible for coach development within their sport.
Simplicity - coach development systems and procedures will be easy to understand, administer and maintain.
Holistic - coach development programmes will equip coaches to support the holistic development of their athletes to produce self-reliant athletes.
Outcome focused - coach development activities will support the objectives ofthe New Zealand Coaching Strategy - more time, increased recognition and status, and improved quality.
Continuous improvement - the Coach Development Framework will enable and encourage coaches to participate in ongoing development opportunities.
Partnership - coach development approaches will utilise the combined knowledge and experience of all the key players in coaching.
To become a world-class coach for a particular coaching community, coaches need to understand their athletes. Thus this page focuses on athletes' physical, emotional, social and cognitive characteristics and their related holistic needs.
An understanding of athletes' individual characteristics, will then lead coaches to better understand of how to cater for collective group needs and individual considerations when designing and implementing activities, games and sessions for their athletes.
Important Note: All individuals are different and respond in totally different ways to different situations at different times. Successful coaches tend to be those who read the signals (empathy) and adapt their approach to best meet both the collective and individual needs of the athletes they coach.
The diagram below gives an overview of the coaching sector. Coaches deliver their sport to a specific or variety of age groups. Depending on the experience and equally important, the development they have undertaken, coaches will operate somewhere between a beginner coach and someone considered a master coach.
Sport Bay of Plenty and the CoachForce codes offer coach development throughout the year in alignment with the coaching communities below.
