Youth Coaches engaging and growing U12's Waterpolo
Youth Coaches engaging and growing U12's Waterpolo
Youth Coaches engaging and growing U12's Waterpolo
Waikato Waterpolo Club
Our under 12s waterpolo programme is successfully run by young coaches who this year have successfully run a school holiday programme and have doubled our under 12 membership. We have 60 young people now enjoying this fast growing sport as well as developing enjoyment for team sports, water safety and most of all self confidence. The care and passion our four coaches have for this age group of 7-12's is inspiring. Next year we have two more young coaches wanting to be mentored by these coaches and our aim is to grow the participation to 80 u12s.
Samantha Bidlake (20), Thomas Perham (21) are our head coaches for this age group. They have also mentored Eva Saxton (16) who has successfully coaching Maeroa Intermediate school as well. Sam has also helped coach other school children - St Josephs School, St Johns College and Thomas has coached Berkley Intermediate School. They all have patience, kindness and enthusiasm and the children respond well to their balance of skill sets mixed with fun at training. Luwane Knipe is our fourth coach who is a young teacher at Hamilton Boys High School and has former experience in coaching waterpolo in South Africa. He has helped this team of 4 with great skills around dealing with childrens (and parents) expectations during competition, organised training plans and is great at being the sounding board for learning ways of engaging with children at different levels.
The under 12s programme last year had 3 teams (10-12 per team), this year the young coaches knew that the programme had potential to grow. They trialed a school hoiday programme which was held for three days and 60 children attended each day. This started the intial first terms training off, they then encouraged the players siblings and friends to come try and join the programme as well. Barriers around other sports and participation is alwaysd present, however, the understanding that at this age children should be trying many sports - they encourage this to happen and the children can come and go without having to make commitments. This takes the pressure off families of having to choose. The tournament teams now have a team of "not trained frequently" so these players can still participate and enjoy tournaments without the pressure. Their main driver is for the players to have fun with their friends and to love the sport of waterpolo. They also found that sitting on the sideline is a whole new opportunity - the siblings. By inviting the 7 - 10 year olds to come train they realised that this is a great strategy to grow the sport and separated the training times to allow these younger players to develop at their own level.
With youth leading this programme the biggest change that has happened is the culture. The safety in trying and failing without ridicule, the friendships and kindness shown in the team spirit. We see this at tournament time when everyone stays to watch each others teams and the unity everyone has as a whole squad, it doesn't matter if you are 7 or 12, girl or boy - everyone is important. Sitting sideline watching these young people develop our youth and watching this culture evlove is inspiring.
We have many examples of children who start this programme with little confidence or social anxiety, or simply not great at land based team sports, thrive under this programme. The youth coaches patience and ability to adapt to the younger players needs is key to the experience our under 12s programme is delivering.
Increase in numbers has been big this year. Increase in interest of young people wanting to become coaches - we have two new young coaches wanting to be mentored in this programme next year. As mention last year we have 3 teams this year 5 - we hope to next year continue growing these numbers. This sport's number one skill is surviving in deep water - and by doubling our numbers this year the extra benefits is fantastic. If we can double this again next year that increases our water safety for our youth in the Waikato. We have had many families feedback that waterpolo is now their number one sport :-)
