Goal setting with youth

First team I ever coached were boys at the age of 14-15. A great age to work with and I fell privileged to work out all ideas I had in my mind.

Whenever coaching the coaches I love to talk about this experience.

One of the first things i did with them was to sit down with them at the arena where the first team played and I asked them

what they really wanted to achieve that season. As all of them played the season before in the same club I could ask them more detailed questions, like if they would prefer just playing their matches and have fun this way, passing their time and have fun in a healthy environment or if they were willing to perform better than the year before.

While talking everyone could interfere and give his own idea, such as 'last year we lost from that team. If only we could do this and that better we would have had a better chance to win and have a higher ranking'.

This was the very moment to take benefit of their spontaneous replies. We were going into details and I wrote everything down in a notebook. The goals for the team and their individual goals. Including the restrictions about being selected and observing and learning from the bench. You will be amazed how different it gets for the players. Especially when you can make switches with all players during the entire match. At such moments they can even feel special when the approach is right.

At the end I wrote 'Goals' on the outside. We had an agreement on what we wanted to achieve that season. As a team and individually. We had on paper where we would focus on and each weekend they knew what to do

and it was their input that made my approach satisfying. I knew from that very moment how hard they would work on their personal improvement and would take account for it.

Often they came to have a look in my notebook, assuring that they were working on the right skills, tasks and their performance in the team. Step by step they learned about their responsibility being a team member, how they improved being coached at progression in every possible way, about getting more confidence, even how to use their positive mindset. As well while playing sports, at school as at home.

One of the things I remember is that one of them was actually a limited player who became one of the most important players in the team by the end of the season. Most coaches would never select him for national selections as he could be almost invisible during the match, yet when they would have compared the percentage of ball handling, passes, finding the open spaces, etc.

Although he made a little progress technically he learned to restrict his capacities and take full benefit of his strong points. He started that year with learning how to read the game, improving his passes and coaching the other players. He was my Mr. No Mistakes.

Most of all, when things were going though he had really great fun being a die hard. When he started to chase for the ball everyone would make those extra meters and such moments were really a boost for their teamspirit. If we couldn't win on technical skills we could at least hurt them in other ways.

At the end of the season I had a little story about everyone. About the goals we set at the beginning of the season and how they improved. Individually and as a team. We had been focussing on the process and never on the outcome. We had no reason to be disappointed about the result of a match as long as we played our best match ever, yet I can assure you...at times there were tears.

Related to this blog next blogs for coaches will be about :

- Involve players in goal setting in a professional environment;

- A goal without a plan is just a wish;

- Focus on the process, not the outcome;

- Loosing a match doesn't alway mean that you are not on track, it might also mean that you are not on track yet;

- Etc.

#goalsetting #sport #process