Coaching at Gosford public
Session 1
We went to Gosford public school to coach AFL basics to year 4 students. I thought that I would use a more authoritarian style of coaching which is much focused on getting the kids to do it properly and not muck around. Also I wasn’t going to listen to the kids and just teach them and tell them what to do. When I started coaching though most of that changed and I became more relaxed and democratic even though they still had no say of what we did I didn’t boss them around and everything was relaxed. We started by playing bulrush and they had no say in that but I let them pick who was in first which demonstrated a more democratic style of coaching. When we did the skills we took a more authoritarian style of coaching even though they could choose their groups we told them exactly what to do. They didn’t really like authoritarian coaching as much but they accepted it to learn the skills. They responded more to the democratic approach because they all wanted a say.
Session 2
The second time we went to Gosford primary school I took much the same approach as I did the first time but with intentions of sticking to an authoritarian style of coaching. This time I did stick to the authoritarian style. At the start the kids wanted to do their own thing but we followed our plan. They always wanted to do kicking but followed our plan and we did hand balling and marking first. When we did do kicking the kids were overjoyed and were a lot happier