The Class of ‘14 came in to life yesterday at Lammas when Notts County Council’s Sport Development Manager, Pete Forster, presented the First Steps into Coaching Workshop to a dozen of the Sting’s Young Leader under-grads.
The multi-sports workshop is geared towards providing the participants with an introduction to coaching and leadership and Mr Forster was delighted with the contributions being made by all of the Sting’s young leaders, he sai: “It’s been a really good afternoon with all the guys showing 100% commitment to learning these new skills.” He went on to say: “I can’t believe that we have 12 kids on this workshop especially as it’s a sunny afternoon in the school holidays!”
The workshop was a mix of classroom theory and practical application with break-out sessions for the groups to work on developing ideas and values about coaching and their potential as influential coaches for the future.
Sting Head Coach Rob Saunders has been mentoring a few of the young leaders for the past couple of months and he knows that the club urgently needs to expand its coaching resource and importantly the Club needs to provide positions of responsibility to all of the young coaches if their development and interests are to be secured. He said: “in the past we’ve had a number of young coaches at the Club but we did not serve those guys as well as maybe we could have. We have learned a lesson here and with this latest crop of young leaders we have afresh approach. I’m sure we can keep these guys focused. The Club’s future depends on us doing just that!”
The first job for the Young Leaders will be to get a detailed understanding of the role of the coach on the Sting’s Learn to Skate programme. With 6 badges to become proficient at as well as being able to teach the skills to young children the new Coaches will be in at the deep end. Then comes the new Stick ‘n Glove programme which will run on Saturday mornings at Lammas from 6th September. There’s not a lot of time left for these new Coaches to get to grips with their coaching skills before they’ll be stood on the ice with some new hockey wannabe’s looking for inspiration.
