Are our kids "over-coached"?

The subject of sports coaching for kids is a touchy one.

On one side of the argument you have people saying that they are the next group of professionals to come into the system and therefore must be coached techniques correctly from as early as possible. The other argument is that they are still young, bodies and minds are developing and they need to enjoy the game before they start having their techniques "refined".

You look around South Africa at all of the specialist cricket, football and rugby or "High Performance" centres being developed and you wonder how much benefit they offer. Don't get me wrong I think that they provide plenty of technical skills and acumen to players but let's be honest - the majority of the kids getting into these academy structures already have some talent - what they need to learn to do is begin to learn and enjoy the game they play for what it is.

Schools rugby is a perfect example - you have 16 year old kids taking muscle building supplements and bench pressing enormous weights so that they can stand out and make a push for the first team. It is not rocket science to know that 95% kids that make their school first teams will not go on to play provincial rugby. Yet every year their coaches are pushing them harder and harder to achieve or turning a blind eye to over the top gym regimes. Many schools take great pride in appointing coaches who have been involved in the game at the highest level - sometimes I worry that these people then try to apply "professional" skills and standards to kids that are still developing.

Cricket is another bug bear for me and one of the places where I believe the academy system goes over the top. Lets be honest - the majority of kids that excel at school cricket are those with good natural hand / eye co-ordination. The actual players that come out of these structures very rarely go on from here and in many cases they have their own techniques (that have served them well up to the point where they reached the academy), butchered by coaches who are only looking at getting things done "technically" right.

I have a mate who coaches one of the top boys hockey school sides in South Africa. He consistently says that he cannot teach them to be better skilled hockey players. They have the natural talent. More often it is their heads that need to be worked on - they need to understand the game itself, where to move, where not to move etc. He often bemoans the fact that his cricket or hockey kids would go away to these High Performance structures and learn bad habits that they would then carry into the game. Suddenly the player who was a flawless tackler had his technique changed and is now 70% of the player he was.

Parents and coaches need to think carefully about the coaching regime they subject their kids to. Yes there is a lot of pride in seeing your child do well in sport. Just make sure that they are actually ready for the pressures they will face.