Kids & Youth Athelete Groups

Focus areas differ for teh youth athlete groups and coaching and training sessions should be conducted according to the age.

Ages 6-11 – these are early starters and still trying to understand the sport. The key for these age group is to have fun rather than doing anything intensive for a longer duration.

Ages 11-15 – The major focus of this group is involvement and participation. This is the ‘transition’ group passing from childhood to adulthood. This age group goes through serious mental and physical changes that need to be focussed on from a coaching perspective. Coaches need to be particularly aware of these changes and ensure that feedback, opinions, emotional stress need to be heard and coaches should also be able to set the correct expectations from this group.

Ages 15+ – this group is ready for entering competition and has the capacity to understand strategy and tactics. This group also can get ready for intense physical demands and in terms of emotionally they are more matured to accept defeat with both positive and critical feedback. Coaches for this age group are more enablers than actual coaching – it is more of a fine-tuning approach rather than actually teaching. For example, a cricketer in this age group would look for fine tuning aspects be it a batsman or bowler, drastic changes in the actions or techniques would not help. The athletes in this age group can transition and come out with their own specific type of play and should be encouraged to do so as everybody is not equal both in physical terms and mentally.