by Tom and Chelsea Barker
There may come a time when your child shows significant potential as an archer
and you find that you cannot help them anymore. It is time to find a mentor or
coach for your child. This article is written to help you choose a coach and
then assist you in how to benefit the most from that person.
How to Choose
We suggest you approach hiring a coach like you would hire a nanny or
housekeeper. You are interviewing them to steward your child. You should look
for basic credentials such as NArchival Archery certifications, other youth archers they work
with and experience as an archer. There are very good coaches that may not have
the highest certifications or be the most accomplished archers, yet they can do
wonders with youth archers. There are others that are very accomplished and
highly certified, but may not be able to communicate well or have a demeanor
that is not ideal for working with kids in a role model position. It is best if
you can see them work in order to judge the quality of fit.
By quality of fit: Does this coach meet the style that is best suited for
your child? While this may get a chuckle, there are definite differences in
coaching approaches with girls and boys. Some coaches are "in-your-face" kind of
coaches with a very results-oriented style. Others are more process oriented and
collegial in their style. With some students a mere suggestion is all that is
needed. Other archers have to be convinced to try something new. We prefer the
process oriented approach because in most circumstances the youngster has
choices and is doing archery for fun. A more directive approach can turn off
many youth archers who are unsure or unconfident. The objective is not to win
the super bowl or go to war, so a more relationship oriented approach is tried.
There are times to be authoritative with youth archers especially when they are
high-performance and goal-driven, but we suggest that this only comes after a
strong student-teacher relationship has been established. The coach must ensure
that the archer is willing and able to improve.
How to Use Your Coach
Once you have a coach in mind, you should communicate your expectations and
boundary conditions. You are the customer here. Sure, there is some
give-and-take in the negotiations such as fees, timing and schedule. But, there
are some things that are non-negotiable and should be settled up front. For
example: if the child is experiencing pain from some aspect of shooting,
shooting stops.
Once the sessions begin, you and the coach should be working together. This
requires good communications on homework, expectations and goal setting. One
role for the parent is to reinforce positives and minimize negatives. For
example, there usually is a decline in initial performance when the archer
begins trying new things the coach is suggesting. The parent can help allay
fears that the youngster might have. It is sometimes difficult for young people
to understand that things might get worse before they get better. A good coach
will report accomplishments or tasks that are being worked on during practice
after each lesson to keep you informed to further support the child.
It is sometimes hard for the parent to give up their old role as coach/parent
and just be the parent now. The new parent role is chief cheerleader and
auditor. If you find yourself in conflict with the instructions the coach is
giving the youngster, it is time to discuss it with the coach away from the
archer. It can also be detrimental to try and augment the instructions the coach
is giving because the youngster may not be ready for that part yet or it can
overload them.
One of the most trying times for parents is at tournaments. Tournaments are when
everyone gets to see the results of the work the coach and archer have put in.
Sometimes it can be an improvement, but frequently it can indicate more training
is needed. Guy Krueger once mentioned that how an archer performs in tournaments
only indicates if they are ahead or behind their training schedule. One of the
hardest things for a parent to do is to let the coach be the coach at a
tournament. A coach should have the ability to maintain a collected demeanor to
keep the archer calm and focused on the task at hand to help the archer with
their mental game. This is essential to the archer's performance, especially at
a big tournament. Parents, while coaches understand your feelings, it is easy to
get caught up emotionally with how your child is doing and if your child sees
that anxiety, it can be detrimental to their mental game. In crucial moments at
a tournament, it is often beneficial for the parents to watch from a bit of a
distance and let the coach have the contact with your child at that point. The
child can still see you and knows you are watching and encouraging (give them a
big thumbs up or something visual to encourage them). All the archer is looking
for from mom and dad are unconditional support and reassurance. It is enormously
comforting to the youth archer to know that all I have to do is shoot because if
anything goes wrong, I have my coach and my parents behind me. As parents, it is
important to reinforce positives, such as personal bests, good shots, improved
form, a positive attitude, or good sportsmanship. We should deemphasize score,
placement, poor shots and mistakes. If any person shoots long enough, a "bad"
day is bound to happen, but with the right approach, it can be turned into a
learning event and made into a "good" day.
If you want your child's coach at the tournament, you should expect to pay for
that. But here is what you should and should not expect. Do not expect a lot of
"coaching" to occur at a tournament. There is enough stress at a match already.
Your coach may make minor suggestions about shot execution to reinforce what
they have been working on, but do not expect major changes here. In all honesty,
a tournament is not the place to do that. Please do not feel that just because
the coach is not changing things in the middle of the tournament that you should
fill in the gap. The coach is observing and making mental notes about things to
work on for the next sessions. The coach pays attention to how the archer
operates and approaches each shot mentally during practice and can influence the
thought process in a positive manner that is specific to your child. Do not
expect your coach to watch every single shot of your archer. They are looking
for other things from other archers that might help your child. They also want
to see how independent the archer is. Have they learned how to adjust their
sights, how to shoot in the wind, and how to interact with other archers on the
line? A good coach will work to give the student independence in those areas to
give them confidence in their abilities early on and to have them involved in
all aspects of shooting because it is not just pulling the string back and
letting it go. All of those skills are just as important to learn without help
from the coach or parent. Expect your coach to be an additional cheerleader and
to support your archer at a tournament. The coach should positively reinforce
the things that have been worked on in practice that are going well
Finally, there may come a time when a good coach comes to you and says that he
or she cannot help your child anymore. This is a good coach who knows his or her
limitations and will be useful in helping your youth archer find a new mentor.
This can be tough for the archer who sees the old coach now as friend and
confidant. But it helps if both the coach and parents explain to the archer that
they are not replacing the coach, as children may fear severing that
relationship. They are instead adding to the team, just as when the original
coach was added to the team.
About the authors:
Ten years ago Tom started in archery when his son, Kevin, was 8 years old.
After a year of watching her brother have all the fun, Tom's daughter Chelsea
said, “I can do that.” They all started shooting with the Goliad County 4H
archery project and later founded the South A Archery JOAD group.
Tom's passion has been youth archery because of the life skills that can be
taught through archery. Tom is an NFAA certified coach and a NArchival Archery Level II
instructor and has mentored hundreds of youth archers.
Chelsea shot as a JOAD archer for eight years and put her bow down in order to
obtain a degree in exercise physiology at Baylor University. She will perform
her graduate work at A Tech starting the summer of 2005. She has conducted
summer camps and continues to mentor both recurve and compound archers. She is
a NArchival Archery Level II instructor.
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