Effective Coaching for All Athletes within Youth Recreational Sports

This book is written for youth sport coaches, the individuals who volunteer their time to teach young athletes the fundamentals of a given sport, as well as the skills needed to work as a team. In writing this book, we recognize that children who enroll in recreational sports have a variety of experiences and skills, and thus this book seeks to provide coaches with a foundational structure and methods to provide effective instruction for all athletes. Within any given team, young athletes have varied skills that range from novice to competent and providing the same activities for all will result in frustration for some of your athletes, either because they do not possess certain prerequisite skills or because they have reached mastery and become bored. It is our goal to provide easy-to-use, practical tools to not only prevent this frustration but to help create an environment that encourages mastery and fun for all, including you, the coach. This book includes information on accessible coaching for teams that may consist of young athletes with learning disabilities, behavioral disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as athletes without disabilities. Effective Coaching includes topics such as effective organization, design of practice environments, communication with families, efficient and feasible progress monitoring, and chapters targeted toward common youth sport programs (e.g., soccer, t-ball, indoor hockey, basketball, flag football, lacrosse, and volleyball).