Dave Clarke Coaching Team Leader Sport Bay of Plenty

The recently produced New Zealand Coaching Strategy sets out how Sport New Zealand, National and Regional Sporting Organisations and Regional Sports Trusts (Sport Bay of Plenty) will develop a world class coaching environment across New Zealand in the next eight years.

Community Sport Coaching Plan

The Community Sport Coaching Plan is designed primarily as an action plan for the key organisations responsible for delivering Community Sport – that is Sport NZ itself, the National Sporting Organisations (NSOs) that govern organised sport across the country and the Regional Sports Trusts (RSTs), who support these NSOs and deliver additional generic coaching programmes on a regional basis.

While the plan specifically targets these key organisations, it also has great relevance to the wider community sport sector. It will prove of interest and provide guidance to the multitude of organisations and individuals that operate in the community sport coaching area including Regional Sports Organisations (RSOs), sports clubs, secondary and primary schools, tertiary institutions, territorial authorities and of course the hundreds of thousands of community sport coaches, who give up their time every week to help make New Zealand a great sporting nation.

Participants at different stages within this pathway will have different coaching needs and for that reason the NZ Coaching Strategy has advocated the establishment of four coaching communities that will specialise at different stages of participant and athlete development.

1. Foundation Coaching Community (Supporting participants in the Learn stage)

Foundation coaches support participants enjoying their first experiences in organised sport. The vast majority of the participants will be primary school aged children trying out a range of modified sports in either a club or primary school setting.

2. Development Coaching Community (Supporting participants in the Participate stage)

Development coaches support a wider range of participants including the young people who continue in organised sport through the later years of primary school, the secondary school students in both the school and club setting and the adults who continue to play organised sport in a non-elite environment.

3. Performance Coaching Community (Supporting athletes in the Perform Stage)

Performance coaches support that narrower range of athletes who have shown extra ability and have moved on to some sort of district or regional representative sport at either a youth or adult level.

4. High Performance Coaching Community (Supporting athletes in the Excel Stage)

High Performance coaches support the athletes who have progressed to the top of their sport within New Zealand and are now competing on an international stage.

There are no firm lines of separation between these coaching communities and some coaches will indeed operate across a range of the communities during their coaching life. But the communities do offer a useful tool to help define what we mean by a community sport coach and also to develop and implement strategies that will help coaches within each community develop to their full potential. By doing so these coaches will be able to offer the appropriate support and guidance to the participants and athletes they coach.

Sport Bay of Plenty and the BayTrust CoachForce Programme are fully aligned to the Sport NZ Coaching Strategy and Community Sport Coaching Plan.

For more information and a copy of the Community Sport Coaching Plan go to sportnz.org.nz