INTERESTED IN MAKING HOCKEY YOUR FAVORITE CLASS OF THE DAY?
REGISTER for the National Sport Academy
Day In The Life of a Female Hockey Athlete at Central Memorial High School!
Over the past sixteen years, the National Sport Academy (NSA) and the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) have worked together to create a strategic partnership designed to specifically address the unique challenges faced by young competitive student athletes aspiring to perform at a top level both in their chosen sport and their academics.
Opportunities exist for grade 7-12 student athletes at three CBE school locations to attend the NSA as a Program of Choice. This supportive school environment has been created to inspire passion for sport while developing character for life!
John W. Gardner has noted the connection between learning and mistakes:
"One of the reasons mature people are apt to learn less than young people is that they are willing to risk less. Learning is a risky business, and they do not like failure. In infancy, when children are learning at a phenomenal rate at which they will never again achieve - they are also experiencing a great many failures. Watch them. See the innumerable times they try and fail. See how little the failures discourage them. With each year that passes they will be less blithe about failure. By adolescence the willingness of young people to risk failure has diminished greatly. And all too often parents rush them further along that road by instilling fear, by punishing failure or by making success seem too precious. By middle age most of us carry in our heads a tremendous catalogue of things we have no intention of trying again becuase we tried them once and failed - or tried them once and did less well than our self-esteem demanded."
The single most prevalent goal of young athletes is to avoid looking dumb. Some try incredibly hard to keep out of situations where they are at risk of looking dumb.
Fear of making a mistake is a paralyzing force that robs athletes of spontaneity, love of the game, and a willingness to try new things. It is the no-buts approach to mistakes that gives this sense of psychological and emotional freedom that can unlock the learning process and occasionally release truly inspired athletic performance.
Perhaps the most important reason why coaches should make the most of mistakes is because every kid knows that adults can be two-faced. All adults tell kids to "do as I say, not as I do." Every kid has seen adults espouse values in the abstract and then violate them in the specific when it was in their interest to do so.
"You get good judgement by exercising bad judgement."
Practice sessions are where the players discover whether the coach knows what he or she is doing and whether or he or she has a commitment to helping the athlete become as good as they can be.
Organizing productive practice sessions for a group of young athletes is an underestimated challenge - it is an art and requires a commitment to make it happen.
The only way to acquire a skill is to over-learn it. Repetition is the key to over-learning, which can lead to outstanding athletic performances.
The key to being able to allow your players some autonomy during practice is having the confidence that you can get and hold their attention when you need or want it. Once a coach learns that he can regain control of the reins, he can loosen up and cultivate a with a gentle hand.
A coach who expects loyalty from his players needs to demonstrate the same loyalty back, rather than telling the world about their failings.
We fail to put ourselves completely in the shoes of our children. When they are our age, most of them also will be able to hit a fifth-grader's pitching. The better comparison for us might be, "Could I hit Nolan Ryan's pitching?" After all, Nolan Ryan is older than most Little League parents.
Five characteristics of outstanding competitors:
- Is internally rather than externally motivated
- Seeks and is energized by challenges
- Sees his/her development as a process under his/her control rather than a fixed capability
- Is independent and willing to risk violating conventional wisdom
- Can accept both success and failures as part of the game
A coach can help players learn to become better decision makers but not if he is breeding dependent order takers.
There is a difference between 'tradition,' which is the living ideas of the dead, and 'traditionalism,' which is the dead ideas of the living.
For more information on this unique opportunity, please call 403-777-3646.
