Coaching

Posted On: 10-26-2023

I spent a great deal of my youth being coached.  That carried forward in college and by the time I was through playing “coached” sports I was burned out on coaches.  I had a variety of coaching styles imposed on me, a few good ones and a few that should likely be brought up on charges for hazing.  For all coaches consider what you do as something that will impact the lives of youth shooters for many years.

First as a coach. consider who is more important: you or the youth shooter.  Always place the youth shooter first.  Go out of your way to make them feel comfortable, secure and important in the grand scheme of shooting and hopefully winning.  I am pretty sure this all goes without saying.

Help them get a vision of what winning would be like.  Use your practices as pre-events and provide praise to winners and support to all others.  Let them know what being a winner is like evening going through the process of giving out re-useable medals at each practice.  Take the time at the end of each practice to discuss how well your shooters performed that day and start to translate that to being at competitive events. 

Be hands on and by that, I mean waxing philosophically about how to do something is not the same and showing someone how to do it correctly.  So here is a challenge for some coaches and that is perhaps they know what to say but don’t know what to do?  Coaching takes effort.  It requires one to read, try, execute and understand and then it requires them to show.  Keep in mind this all occurs at practice and not during an event.  By the time they get to shooting on the line they must be ready, and you are the one that makes them ready.

I have said this before that there are many coaches out there that are great and never played the sport they coach.  What you will find though in that scenario is that they are surrounded by people that have played the sport and can employ methods they have learned and executed.  As a coach who might fall into category one above, it might be a great time to reach out to others that might have a better idea of how to show methods.  Do not be afraid to share in the coaching.  Being a coach is a privilege and not to be seen as position of power.  Never be stubborn about sharing in the coaching because in the end you are just making kids stronger and more competitive. 

Finally, coaching has two sides: positive feedback and negative feedback.  Don’t get distracted by the later and use the former to encourage and support your youth shooters.  Your success will be remembered by those kids growing into young adults that want to coach just like you!