It was sitting there looking at me every day.
A spare hard drive at the back of my desk.
On it was a book: 80,000 words in 17 chapters.
It took 7 years to write, every evening after the coaching.
336 tips from 14 years running a junior tennis programme coaching at times, upward of 700 kids a week of all ages and stages from 4 year-old beginners to 16 year old tournament players.
A former corporate marketing executive who had spent 12 years in a multi-national company, I had packed it in to do something else. I had then travelled around the world and done many things, including following the Grand Slam tennis tournaments as they took place through 1992 and early 1993 in Paris, Wimbledon, New York and Melbourne.
While watching all that tennis, it came to me one day, sitting in the stands at Didsbury in Manchester that I had to get involved in the thing I love, sport and specifically tennis.
I became a tennis coach with the help of Steve Matthews who offered me the job of running the junior tennis programme at the David Lloyd Club in Raynes Park, S.W. London very close to Wimbledon itself.
As a qualified and then licenced tennis coach, I had run my programme for 5 years and the numbers had risen significantly from 140 kids a week to over 700 a week. During that time, I had also researched every bit of youth sports information I could lay my hands on. I wanted to run great coaching but I wanted to know why some things worked and why other stuff didn't.
Then Cliff Drysdale, the former tennis star, a man then and now involved in junior coaching in the United States, walked past the tennis courts full of kids having fun while he was at Wimbledon. He looked across the courts and said, 'Crippsey, you've got to write this stuff down.'
So one day I started and with the fantastic help of my friend Bob Mitchell, a self avowed sports nut and published writer, who crafted together my initial notes and helped me to write a book proposal on the project with view to getting it published, I started writing.
While making efforts to get a traditional book deal, I kept the writing going, every evening, using the fresh experiences of the coaching day after day.
In 2000, the U.K. arm of the Professional Tennis Registry, the independent worldwide tennis coaching organisation presented me with their Golden Eagle award for outstanding contribution to junior tennis.
The momentum was building.
Eventually, after many hours, many re-writes and a massive amount of editing, it was done.
The material forms a pretty comprehensive model for running a junior tennis programme, although the vast majority of the content could be applied to any sport. In fact, everything any adult involved in a youth sports programme might need to consider in order to maximise the performance of their club, activity or programme is included. From all the planning considerations through the coaching and the regulations, it's the principles and the practices broken down into bite size chapters, then sections and then individual tips.
The book includes much on the philosophy of what makes great youth sports experiences for kids but is about practical things that the adults involved can actually do. So it's as much oriented towards the actions as the words.
In 2007, I had been forced to give up the best job in the world, due to chronic knee problems and begun a new chapter in my life where I've now got involved with sports memorabilia in my 2 original sports of football and cricket (see my blog, GoalsandWickets).
Meanwhile, the book with all those practical tips settled down to a life in permanent semi-retirement on my spare hard drive.
But then came London 2012 and as everyone began to start talking about the legacy of the games, I found myself writing frequent and long posts on internet forums to which many would respond.
I kept looking at the hard drive and came to a decision. I needed to get the material out there.
While still a coach, I had made efforts to get the book published but despite the frequent calls for increased participation in youth and school sports from just about everywhere you looked, from a commercial perspective, the type of material I had to offer was just a bit too niche for the large publishers and those who were specialists in the area, like Human Kinetics, already had similar offerings.
However, having spent 2 years writing my GoalsandWickets blog, I already had some experience in how this all works, so I decided to set up another blog, this blog, to get the process started.
Through the prism of events in the sports world, I will write about youth sports issues and any of the tips in my book which are relevant.
I will also write about the book itself both from the perspective of the big picture which provides a structure for youth sports people and from the perspective of the original tips which have been written for people to take or leave, to dip in and dip out, to try and see how they work for them, even to enhance and improve them for the benefit of the kids.
Hopefully, in as many cases as possible, any tips I give can be the start of other's experience and not the final word.
I won't tell people what to do but I do have a whole lot of experience from those 14 years which may just help a few people. It was a marriage of organisation and love for sport and getting kids playing, all kids.
So if you are an adult involved in youth sport, whether a policy maker, an administrator, a manager, a coach, an assistant coach, an official, a journalist, a volunteer helper or a parent with a kid involved in a sport or one who you want to get involved, this blog and the tips from my book as I write about them will hopefully provide something for you to use.
The blog will take time to build and hopefully, readers remarks, comments and experiences about what they went through as a kid in sports and what they are experiencing now in any one of the roles I've just listed above can add to the blog.
Maybe in this way, the blog can become a resource of shared experiences built on the foundation of my original material?
I hope so.
Let's see how it goes.
A spare hard drive at the back of my desk.
On it was a book: 80,000 words in 17 chapters.
It took 7 years to write, every evening after the coaching.
336 tips from 14 years running a junior tennis programme coaching at times, upward of 700 kids a week of all ages and stages from 4 year-old beginners to 16 year old tournament players.
A former corporate marketing executive who had spent 12 years in a multi-national company, I had packed it in to do something else. I had then travelled around the world and done many things, including following the Grand Slam tennis tournaments as they took place through 1992 and early 1993 in Paris, Wimbledon, New York and Melbourne.
While watching all that tennis, it came to me one day, sitting in the stands at Didsbury in Manchester that I had to get involved in the thing I love, sport and specifically tennis.
I became a tennis coach with the help of Steve Matthews who offered me the job of running the junior tennis programme at the David Lloyd Club in Raynes Park, S.W. London very close to Wimbledon itself.
As a qualified and then licenced tennis coach, I had run my programme for 5 years and the numbers had risen significantly from 140 kids a week to over 700 a week. During that time, I had also researched every bit of youth sports information I could lay my hands on. I wanted to run great coaching but I wanted to know why some things worked and why other stuff didn't.
Then Cliff Drysdale, the former tennis star, a man then and now involved in junior coaching in the United States, walked past the tennis courts full of kids having fun while he was at Wimbledon. He looked across the courts and said, 'Crippsey, you've got to write this stuff down.'
So one day I started and with the fantastic help of my friend Bob Mitchell, a self avowed sports nut and published writer, who crafted together my initial notes and helped me to write a book proposal on the project with view to getting it published, I started writing.
While making efforts to get a traditional book deal, I kept the writing going, every evening, using the fresh experiences of the coaching day after day.
In 2000, the U.K. arm of the Professional Tennis Registry, the independent worldwide tennis coaching organisation presented me with their Golden Eagle award for outstanding contribution to junior tennis.
The momentum was building.
Eventually, after many hours, many re-writes and a massive amount of editing, it was done.
The material forms a pretty comprehensive model for running a junior tennis programme, although the vast majority of the content could be applied to any sport. In fact, everything any adult involved in a youth sports programme might need to consider in order to maximise the performance of their club, activity or programme is included. From all the planning considerations through the coaching and the regulations, it's the principles and the practices broken down into bite size chapters, then sections and then individual tips.
The book includes much on the philosophy of what makes great youth sports experiences for kids but is about practical things that the adults involved can actually do. So it's as much oriented towards the actions as the words.
In 2007, I had been forced to give up the best job in the world, due to chronic knee problems and begun a new chapter in my life where I've now got involved with sports memorabilia in my 2 original sports of football and cricket (see my blog, GoalsandWickets).
Meanwhile, the book with all those practical tips settled down to a life in permanent semi-retirement on my spare hard drive.
But then came London 2012 and as everyone began to start talking about the legacy of the games, I found myself writing frequent and long posts on internet forums to which many would respond.
I kept looking at the hard drive and came to a decision. I needed to get the material out there.
While still a coach, I had made efforts to get the book published but despite the frequent calls for increased participation in youth and school sports from just about everywhere you looked, from a commercial perspective, the type of material I had to offer was just a bit too niche for the large publishers and those who were specialists in the area, like Human Kinetics, already had similar offerings.
However, having spent 2 years writing my GoalsandWickets blog, I already had some experience in how this all works, so I decided to set up another blog, this blog, to get the process started.
Through the prism of events in the sports world, I will write about youth sports issues and any of the tips in my book which are relevant.
I will also write about the book itself both from the perspective of the big picture which provides a structure for youth sports people and from the perspective of the original tips which have been written for people to take or leave, to dip in and dip out, to try and see how they work for them, even to enhance and improve them for the benefit of the kids.
Hopefully, in as many cases as possible, any tips I give can be the start of other's experience and not the final word.
I won't tell people what to do but I do have a whole lot of experience from those 14 years which may just help a few people. It was a marriage of organisation and love for sport and getting kids playing, all kids.
So if you are an adult involved in youth sport, whether a policy maker, an administrator, a manager, a coach, an assistant coach, an official, a journalist, a volunteer helper or a parent with a kid involved in a sport or one who you want to get involved, this blog and the tips from my book as I write about them will hopefully provide something for you to use.
The blog will take time to build and hopefully, readers remarks, comments and experiences about what they went through as a kid in sports and what they are experiencing now in any one of the roles I've just listed above can add to the blog.
Maybe in this way, the blog can become a resource of shared experiences built on the foundation of my original material?
I hope so.
Let's see how it goes.
So much to say in support, however it's late/early but needless to say this blog is now saved to favourites! The concept of sharing ideas for the greater good has long been lacking so this is a great great start!!!
ReplyDeleteOk, just watched an interview with Jenny Price (UK Sport) who banged on about the £500 million they've invested since London won the 2012 bid. The main point of the sound bite was about the inspiration given to future athletes and the legacy we will be left with. 'A generation will be inspired' was the quote that stood out.
ReplyDeleteMy question is therefore this. Why did the coalition scrap SSP last year
on the eve of our greatest sporting festival in living memory for most?
c£160 million is a big chunk of cash to find each year in times of austerity, but when broken down into 'exercise hours' I'd reckon it equates to pence per child in our schools. Add to this the value put into already overstretched school sports programmes, where teachers can't be expected to be experts in everything, and where professional coaches can not only fill the gap but ID talent and you might get where this comes from.
A scaling down would have been understandable, but the guillotine is a disaster. The emphasis is now put onto parents to provide, in times where finance and hours left in the day are at a premium just to survive in the current climate.
Forget 4 years time, or for that matter 8 years even, if I'm still blessed to be around in 2024 I'll be very interested to see what talent we have competing based on the investment of today.
Looking back to when the bid was won, the rationale was as much about creating a healthy nation as it was about winning medals. Trying to create a direct relationship / equation between money invested and success gained is a notoriously risky business at the elite end, as has been seen in swimming over the last 2 weeks. Better teacher and coach training with small kids, better priced activity easier to access and better promoted too are just a few of the things needed in every one of the 36 Olympic Sports at the grassroots, recreational participatory end of things (not quite sure how Weightlifting might work for the Under 18's though!).
ReplyDeleteBoy child (6) does a term time activity called Multi skills, an hour a week of after school fun which costs us £1 per week. This is run, amusingly enough, by 2 qualified tennis coaches and is games based...cue references to all the games derived on the courts of SW20! They also have access to other kit, and the kids have learnt running, throwing and jumping skills, not to mention even golf of all things! These have all been taught by guys who have an understanding of sports skills and what exercise means in the greater scheme of things.
DeleteThe tragedy is that these same 2 very talented blokes are now working on freelance basis, we're lucky enough to tap into it locally and keep them. The scrapping of SSP's has robbed the country of quality physical skills provisions in schools to add to the immense job our teachers do, not to mention adding to the burgeoning dole queues.
What next? Where does provision for it's own sake come from now?
On the one hand, I doubt if there would ever be provision for provision's sake, Adrian. However, this is not a problem and maybe it's all a question of definition? The benefits of sport and just general exercise for the 5-11's are so great that they create a strong and compelling rationale in their own right for establishing or should we say re-establishing, the type of PE based foundational activity that kids used to do (and from the sounds of it, what the kids are doing with your 2 coaches). Perhaps this means that the phrase, 'provision for provision's sake' actually means provision for all the great basic reasons that make sport and exercise so obvious (really all the stuff about a healthier and more productive populace, never mind the improvements in social skills, social interaction etc etc). Of course, as I said in the post, as long as the good bits of PE are re-established and not the bad bits, then that's what is important. The 2 tennis coaches you have access to sound like good guys. I read in one internet post that at some schools now, the long jump, triple jump and high jump are not allowed any more due to health and safety. Surely, these are the sort of areas of policy which need to be reviewed? Maybe again, it all comes down to having not just decent facilities but teachers and coaches who know how to coach these disciplines to kids of different ages in a way that maximises the goodness of the experience while minimising the risks. If these disciplines are not allowed, what next? The banning of running for kids? They actually do this as naturally as everyone else breathes. PS Your coaches remind me of all those daft jokes we used to share with the kids - Why do mushrooms like going to parties? Because they're FUN GUYS.
ReplyDelete