Volume: 2 Edition (9)
Posted: Wednesday, October 28th,
2013
“If we can make things better, how cool is
that!”
News: “Professional Development and
YOU!”
Did you attend the Atlantic Coaching Conference this past year or coach a team or complete an NCCP module like,
“Making Head Way in Sport”? If yes to any or all, starting in 2014, the Coaching
Association of Canada (CAC) will give Certified Competitive Introduction
coaches credit for attending these professional development (PD) events. And
don’t think lacrosse is the only one who has figured out that life-long
learning greatly benefits all our athletes, not just the high performance
achievers.
The CAC is helping every sport across Canada to formalize the number of
points Certified Comp Intro coaches will acquire and the time period, or cycle,
with which to complete the total number of PD points. At the CLA coaching
sector meeting held in Toronto last week, the committee recommended that CLA
adopt a five year cycle in which coaches would achieve 20 points.
Professional development can come in many forms in the way of NCCP
modules, sport specific clinics or sport related sessions like sport psychology
or nutrition. As points for these events vary, CAC has set up a points matrix
which can be viewed in the following PDF file (pages 9-14, points matrix table
on pg 14: http://www.coach.ca/files/NCCP_Policies_ImplementationStandards_Jan2013.pdf
)
In the future Certified Competitive Development coaches (the next step
after Comp Intro) will work towards 30 points in the five year period. At this
time, CLA is still putting the final touches on the Comp Dev program and plans
to offer two of these clinics in 2014, roughly January and March next year.
News: “Team Nova Scotia Head Coaches”
Reminder that the Team Nova Scotia Head Coach
application deadline is only days away, Friday, November 1st. If you
have not received or require the Process and Application documents, please
forward an email as soon as possible to lacrossetechdirector@sportnovascotia.ca
. Like last year, applications will be accepted up to 5pm.
Teams requiring Head Coaches for 2014 include:
Girls’ (box) bantam, midget and juniors; Boys (box) peewee, bantam, midget and
Founders; and, men’s field U16 and U19. If you are interested in coaching any
of the other potential provincial teams (eg. President’s Cup), please state
your intentions, and submit your application, before November 1st.
Technical Director’s “My 2 Cents”
It just makes sense to me that we divide our box
and field divisions into age groups, but after spending two very intense days working
on CLA’s new skills matrix table last week in Toronto, the LTAD stage
categories do better help coaches deal with gender and life stage development
versus date of births. A case in point: Last January I posted the LTAD skills “wheel”
diagrams on our blog, www.laxcoachns.blogspot.ca
. The five wheels are separated by the age groups we use in box lacrosse, tyke
to midget. What I wasn’t able to accommodate was the needs of female box
lacrosse players because some of their guidelines run between the age divisions.
A quick review of the LTAD groupings:
Active Start – G & B 0-6 years MiniTyke:
4-6
Fundamentals – G
6-7 B
6-10 Tyke:Novice
7-8:9-10
Learning 2 Train – G 8-10 B 10-12 Peewee 11-12
Training 2 Train – G 11-14 B 12-16 Bantam
13-14
Learning & Training 2 Compete - G 15-21+ B
16-23+ Midget:Jr 15-16:17-21
Learning & Training 2 Win - G & B 17+ Senior & Pro
G=Girls, B=Boys
So at a quick glance, you can see that the box
age divisions don’t fit neatly into the LTAD scheme which reflects “physical,
mental and emotional capacities in athletes according to
scientifically-recognized principles and stages of human development”. A great
point raised last week while reviewing the miss-matches, what if a set of
standards with measurable criteria were available to group players into their
LTAD divisions? Certainly for boys at the peewee stage where height and weights
seem to range the most, this plan could bear fruit. But lets get back to
reality, that ain’t going to happen.
So what to do? Well, it was the committee’s
job to identify every technical and tactical skill related to box lacrosse (men’s
and women’s field to come) and create a delivery path for each skill based on INTRO,
DEVELOP, REFINE and PERFECT (Each of these where also divided into three more divisions).
These four pathway divisions were then spread across the LTAD divisions, which could
mean that a single delivery division could span several LTAD divisions. An example:
Scooping’s DEVELOP division spans Fundamentals to Learn 2 Train.
At this point the KISS rule (Keep It Simple
Stupid) and our rapidly expanding skills matrix table seem to be at odds, but
the key for every box coach is to know when a skill needs to be introduced,
when its complexity needs to be enhanced and/or incorporated into game tactics
and making sure players reach the appropriate skill level related to the
highest standards and/or measurable levels for a specific LTAD division.
To put the highest standards in perspective of
their impact, my first thought was National competition. However, listening to
Ontario’s technical director, their apex is easily the NLL. Imagine then if we
backtracked using my standard versus Ontario’s to the level of our peewee
provincial and select teams.
To really go out on a limb here, what if we
box coaches took charge and set one evening a week to novice, peewee and bantam
divisions during the month of April at Rocky Lake Dome? An example: All novice
teams and coaches meet every Tuesday evening for one-and-a-half hours (Three-hours
if two sessions are required). Over three to four weeks, coaches and players review
the basics and introduce all technical skills up to the level recommended by
the present LTAD suggestions. For peewee and novice, basic tactical skills
could also be reviewed. As players went through “basic training”, coaches could
develop and refine their teaching skills with the help of more experienced
coaches and work towards NCCP Comm Dev standards.
Another great reason for doing this is that
the CLA coaching sector is working towards removing the workbook requirements
for Comm Dev. We could kill two birds with one stone: Review basics for players
and get them up to game speed before May 1st league play and more
conveniently move coaches through the NCCP Comm Dev coaching process/manual
(Completely admit to ripping off Wayne Finck’s coaching clinic “module” idea).
The Metro Minor Lacrosse League took a great
step in grouping tyke and novice games last year, which absolutely helped the
development of new tyke players and coaches. As technical director it was great
to sit down and watch four or five novice games in a row, but as much as the
MMLL wanted to help develop novice coaches, more focus had to be placed on the newer
referees, who received great on-the-spot game feedback. The novice game schedule
did not allow group coaching sessions like the tyke’s program, but perhaps we
now have a time and a place to change that.
News: “Tips From The
Crease”
“Get Coaching!”
The following link (www.coach.ca/get-coaching--s16572)
says it all in its first paragraph, “Is this your
first year of coaching, and you have no clue what to do? Or, perhaps you've
been a coach for a couple of years, but know that there are still some things
you could learn about planning your practices? Packed with tips, tools, and
resources you can download, these FREE tutorials will set you up for success!”
OK, betting you have some sort of
clue as to what coaching is about, but who hasn’t come out of a NCCP Comm Dev clinic
and felt a bit overwhelmed or wished there was time to go into more depth on
certain topics. Certainly for those looking to beef up their practice plans, the
Get Coaching site is a great resource, whether you’re coaching lacrosse or any
other sport.
News: “Next Month”
Keep track of up-coming events on LNSS’s
website newslider and calendar.
- Team Nova Scotia Head Coach ApplicationDeadline,
Nov. 1st
- Petro-Can Sport Leadership Sportif,
Nov. 7th-9th, Calgary
- LNSS AGM, Nov. 9th See
Website
- CLA AGM, Nov. 15th-17th,
St. Johns
- Free Learning Facilitator modules
(LF), Nov. 29th
“Players should expect the best - We can
deliver”
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