Playing, teaching and talking Croquet
I am a Croquet Player and was once listed as the top ranked England Female player. I am very competative and enjoy playing at the best level I can, but I also enjoy coaching others. I usually coach beginners through to club players wanted to get just a little bit better.
Above all, I enjoy coaching young players, many of them have just not found their sport yet. Although Croquet isn't always for everyone, coaching should be about the player, the sport comes second. I enjoy coaching youth performance to help young people acheive, not just the skills, but the confidence to go with them.
Introduction
Sportspeople who begin their training from an early age often achieve great success in their chosen sport. Some young people, although they may have the passion and understanding of the sport to start their training at an early age, may not yet have the behavioural characteristics to allow them to develop to the best of their ability. This could be difficulties with forming relationships with others effecting their performance in team based sports, or perhaps the young person suffers with frustration of early failures leading to anxiety and self-limiting beliefs.
Conversational Coaching
Using a conversational approach to coaching, I am able to communicate with the young people in the way they will best be able to understand, enabling them to learn in a way which suits their individual needs and wants. Often a sportsperson will learn more themselves as they are describing and analysing their activity to another person. The skill of conversation may need to be developed first, once this skill has been learned the same process could be used with a training buddy, which is something I would encourage moving forward.
Achievement Analysis
Encouraging the young person to set their own goals and expectations ensures that they are committed to their own training routines and improvements, removing the fear of failure from imposed goals. Using measurable, clearly defined and achievable goal setting, the young person can track their own performance and improvements whilst also learning to deal with under-achievements in a structured and unemotional environment.
Core Strength & Skills
Each student will have a requirement to excel in different physical skills and mental attributes unique to their sport. However, core body strength and alignment can be applied to all sports, alongside developing and enhancing existing or required behavioural and mental practices, any sportsperson's ability within their chosen sport can improve using the same techniques.
What does success look like, to me?
Having been a sportsperson myself, alongside owning my own business, I have learned to set expectations for myself. The question we should all ask ourselves is, "What does success look like, to me?". Success to me is when a young person is able to accept or possibly decline, and then apply, skills and techniques that I have shown, then be able to continue their development without me. By providing core skills and encouraging self-development, the young sports people I work with will hopefully be able to not only recognise that my coaching is no longer required, but also that they are confident enough to discuss it, plan and initiate their future training without me.
About Me
Even now as a 38 year old, I cannot sit still. From a very early age I was always hopeless as being bored, when I was younger it was called being fidgety, these days is being over-active. Terms may change, but people are still just people.
I was lucky that my parents recognised my need for activity, so during my childhood I was introduced to music where I learned the piano and cornet, I competed in 3 different styles of dancing and spent time leaning gymnastics and the trampoline. In my adult years I worked for the first 10 years in large corporations within the financial sector, then became self-employed and have since owned my own business. Alongside my professional career I have always continued with the additional activity that my body and mind seem o need, so originally Salsa dancing was my preferred choice of activity. I learned and taught salsa for several years until just after I turned 30, when the late nights began to take their toll, so I turned my hand to a completely different activity, the sport of Croquet.
Croquet is a sport that I have been aware of since I was 8 years old, as my father has played since then and competed for Wales internationally. Although in my early years I never thought I would become a player myself, however, here we are 30 years later and I find myself within the top 10 female players in the world.
Having become a qualified Croquet coach in 2018, following from assisting other coaches in clubs around the country, I found I have a passion for working with young people. Introducing young people to croquet has been interesting and challenging in many different ways, but mainly it has highlighted to me the need for specialist performance coaching for young people, not just within the sport of croquet.
I have since studied a National Diploma in Psychology to enhance my knowledge and understanding general psychology, with psychology in sport being of particular interest, and focussing specifically on behavioural characteristics, desires and difficulties.
As a natural communicator and encourager, I am able to help young people use their own behavioural characteristics to the best of their abilities. Seeing potential behavioural difficulties as advantages over another sportsperson, but also supporting any needs to change their thought processes and beliefs, can help benefit their individual performances.