Your First Coaching Book: A Practical Guide for Volunteer Coaches

For the millions of children involved in youth sports, it is their coach who plays a major role in the way they will feel about playing. It is the coach who is entrusted with organising the team, setting up training activities, managing the games, handling medical crises and buying the post-game pizzas. Unfortunately, few youth sports organisations provide any real training for their coaches. Instead, those who volunteer for this job must pick up the information on their own or learn it as they go. The result of this inexperience can be seen in the increasingly large percentage of kids who drop out of organised leagues. To help the coaches understand their important role, including the challenges that lie ahead of them, The National Alliance for Youth Sports-America’s premier youth sports advocacy group-has created a simple and straightforward guide for volunteer coaches. It presents the elements that make up good coaching, details the tasks for which a coach is responsible, and explains how a coach can best deal with the most common problems faced both on and off the playing field. Solidly based on the Alliance’s twenty-five years of experience with youth sports organisations, YOUR FIRST COACHING BOOK offers sound and practical advice on all key issues.