A lot of different people are involved in creating meaningful sport experiences. Sport for Life is committed to ensuring Canadian athletes have good coaches, good parents, and good board members in their lives. It’s all about meeting lifelong learners wherever they’re at and helping them develop their skills and prepare for success.
Coaches
Coaching all coaches
The number one job of a coach is to ensure you’re giving the athlete a great experience, according to Hockey Canada’s Corey McNabb. And there are many responsibilities on top of that, so what role does the National Coaching Certification (NCCP) have in all this? Olympian Dr. Cari Din emphasizes the importance of meeting each athlete where they are, custom-designing your approach to meet their needs. “We are meeting a lifelong learner and we’re embracing them,” she says.
Parents
Coaching all coachesMore than just a cheerleader
Parents have a huge impact on how their children experience sport, and the wrong kind of pressure could lead to them leaving it prematurely. Athlete Halle Pratt talks about the strong influence her parents had on her training, emphasizing that she only had to continue to compete if she wanted to. Olympian Dr. Cari Din encourages parents to ask questions, get engaged, “and have the car ride home involve conversations about connection, about learning, about how your child feels – that matters more than anything.”
Boards
Becoming a board member
Joining a board can be daunting, but according to Olympian Dr. Cari Din there are plentiful online resources, including some from Sport for Life, that can get parents to a high level of knowledge before getting started. Allison Osvath of Killarney Synchro Swim Club says, “we try to break it down and make sure they don’t see it as such a scary thing, you don’t have to quit your day job to do it.” Hockey Canada’s Corey McNabb puts it this way: “the number one thing is to get good people who are there for the right reasons, for the good of the organization.”
