Coach Shadowing:

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Self-awareness is a fundamental tool to the success in leadership as it surpasses both IQ and technical skills. A person with a higher self-awareness is driven with creativity and innovation. Excellent leaders tend to instil self-awareness of those around them because they tend to act as role models for a more authentic leadership style. Shadowing coaching receives a piece of wealth information when they accompany qualified coaches and leaders. One can learn critical elements of verbal and non-verbal communication and organization culture of their leading people. Coaches use verbal and non-verbal communication to give instant feedback to players and what is entailed of them. Through this paper, I will not the process I underwent as a shadow coach, the experiences I gained and how I bettered my coaching ability.

As part of my Sports studies degree, I am needed to reflect critically on coach shadowing, and I chose to use Rebecca Sawiuk. The plan given was to shadow for 8 hours with an experienced coach. The sessions of coach Rebecca Sawiuk were 2 hours long with some few minutes break. Her sessions included a mixture of technical practices at the start with passing, dribbling, and shooting. As time went by, she employed tactical techniques such as 5v3 possession and 6v3 counter/overload scenarios (Carling, Williams, & Reilly, 2007). Later towards the end of the training session, there will be a small-sided game. Throughout the 8 hours scheduled, I shadowed four sessions that were broken down into 45 minutes of technical work, 15 minutes of tag game, 30 minutes of overload and 20 minutes match time.

It was an honour to work with Rebecca Sawiuk. During the start of the experience, I was thrilled and animated to have an opportunity to shadow such a high calibre coach. It was indeed an opportunity to get my foot at coaching more so for such a talented club like Watford. Coach Rebecca Sawiuk assured me if I did my work correctly and they recognize that I have the potential of making a great coach, the directors from the Club could secure me a job, and maybe shortly I will make a great coach (Jones, Potrac, Cushion, & Ronglan, 2010). The experiences varied during the days that I stayed at the Club, I became sceptical at the coaching level, different players had different attitudes, and some attitudes were encouraging. Young lads wanted to make it in football, and they could put in them all to ensure that they succeed. Coach Rebecca Sawiuk has successfully used the Club’s support to give 100% in every training session that she carries out. Overall, I felt that I had achieved a lot, and I am thankful and fortunate to have worked with coach Rebecca Sawiuk (Faga, 2018).

Coach Rebecca Sawiuk holds a BSc Sports Coaching from the University of Hertfordshire, and she is a licensed UEFA coach. I had the privilege to work under her with all he experiences in coaching; I had so much to learn from her. She is a kind and strict coach simultaneously, and I knew the values of being patient with the players while ensuring that they are doing what you had instructed them to do. Some of the experiences I gained under Rebecca Sawiuk as a shadow coach include the fun and exercise (Zachary, 2005). I had to run around and involve in the movement that the players were undertaking because as a coach, you have to show by examples. It’s no secret that running around the field is beneficial to our health, and in the process, I did not even notice how much exercise I was doing. The practices gave me a refreshing spirit and helped me connect with the players, and I felt how fun it is to be a sports coach (Faust, 2013).

Rebecca Sawiuk was not only focused in delivering necessary soccer skills to these young players, but she was also determined to shape these players to responsible adults by instilling them with social skills like discipline, patience, determination and teamwork. She taught me that putting it your sole responsibility to ensure team players are developing both in skills and being responsible for human beings. Coach Rebecca Sawiuk also taught me that these young lads need motivation all the time so that they can continue pushing to achieve greater heights in their sports (Stratton, Reilly, Richardson, & Williams, 2004).

Coach Rebecca Sawiuk is an experienced coach who has been in the coaching industry for over seven years. Since the year 2013 up to date, she has been a senior Lecture in BSc. Sports Coaching at the University of Hertfordshire. She is also the lead coach of Watford Academy U12. She was a Technical Director of oxford United U9-U20 (Aguilar, 2020). With these massive coaching experiences, I learned that a coach should contribute to Talent ID and evaluate coaching sessions aligned to the team you are coaching. A coach is tasked with individual player learning, action planning, and reviewing such a player’s progress. I was also taught how to use PMA/Hudl system to record a player’s progress and any feedback therein. Pastoral care of players is also a coach’s responsibility that I had to learn how it’s done, coach Rebecca Sawiuk was kind enough to take me through the process, and it impacted my coaching career skills (Hampton, Rhodes, & Stokes, 2004).

On the evidence confirming of my completion of a coach shadowing experience with coach Rebecca Sawiuk, I will attach an email sent by coach Rebecca Sawiuk ensuring and highlighting the details of my shadowing experiences and how I performed in the process. Some of the learning I gained with coach Rebecca Sawiuk included; as a coach, it is essential that you connect with your players, you get to know their strengths and weakness and be available to help them during that period. Since these are young players, they may lose focus from time to time and motivation is key in ensuring that they continue sharpening their skills to become better soccer players in the future (Sports, 2011). I also learned that every player’s individual development is every coach’s top priority. A good coach should ensure that his/her players emulate both technical, tactical and physical soccer skills not forgetting the psycho-social life lessons. As a coach, you should always be proud of your achieving players, and it was a thrilling moment as I witnessed players conquering individual development objectives from specific soccer techniques to achieve psycho-social growth. I also learned that a player should be strategic, authentic, resilient, hardworking, passionate, and professional to make it a professional soccer player.

A coach should be ready to adopt specific actions/ approaches that suit players to excel. Players have different attitudes that need other processes, and as a coach, you must be sharp to avoid triggering unwanted reactions to the young and fragile players (Blom & Blom, 2009). I was lucky enough to have participated n a 1- to- one coach observations because I was able to get firsthand experiences and witnessed what takes place in the process of coaching live. I should emulate coach Rebecca Sawiuk in praising athletes during the process of giving them instructions. I will also try to make players happy and provide one-on-one coaching in a friendly manner (Inc) and allow players to attempt tasks independently before intervening to give players the freedom to make their own decisions. I also learned that praising a player when they have improved not to upset them. I learned the critical mix of autocratic and democratic coaching styles from Rebecca Sawiuk to ensure players are doing as per what the coach needs.

In conclusion, I learned that a coach ought to educate my players on the concept of winning. It is critical that players acquire the needs skills to become good players in the future, and a coach is a teacher they will learn from. Shadowing was an achievement for me, as stated earlier, I achieved so many skills and all the theories that I had learned in class. I was able to apply them in the practical field. Technical development is paramount in young players who are eager to achieve much; therefore, the coach’s mandate is to ensure that such skills have been passed to the young players. It is essential that a coach talks to the team after a match and analyze how the game was played (Slack, Byers, & Thurston, 2020). Ask the players on their reasoning on their mistakes during the match, the wrong decisions they made and how they can improve from them. I feel overjoyed to have shadowed with the Watford academy, it was a fantastic club full of talents, and the kind of exposure that you get from them is enormous. I had a feeling that I could coach already during my shadow coaching with Rebecca Sawiuk, but as a shadow, you are only required to do the observation and less of practically being involved in the activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Aguilar, E. (2020). The Art of Coaching Workbook: Tools to Make Every Conversation Count. John Wiley & Sons, 2020.

Blom, L., & Blom, T. (2009). Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Soccer. Human Kinetics, 2009.

Carling, C., Williams, A. M., & Reilly, T. (2007). Handbook of Soccer Match Analysis: A Systematic Approach to Improving Performance. Routledge, 2007.

Faga, J. (2018). The Real Giants of Soccer Coaching: Insights and Wisdom from the Game’s Greatest Coaches. Meyer & Meyer Sport, 2018.

Faust, C. K. (2013). Step up and Coach Youth Soccer. AuthorHouse, 2013.

Hampton, G., Rhodes, C., & Stokes, M. (2004). A Practical Guide to Mentoring, Coaching and Peer networking: Teacher Professional Development in Schools and Colleges. Routledge, 2004.

Inc, R. (n.d.). Coaching Soccer. Reedswain Inc.

Jones, R. L., Potrac, P., Cushion, C., & Ronglan, L. T. (2010). The Sociology of Sports Coaching. Routledge, 2010.

Slack, T., Byers, T., & Thurston, A. (2020). Understanding Sport Organizations: Applications for Sport Managers. Human Kinetics, 2020.

Sports, N. A. (2011). Coaching Soccer For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.

Stratton, G., Reilly, T., Richardson, D., & Williams, A. M. (2004). Youth Soccer: From Science to Performance. Psychology Press, 2004.

Zachary, L. J. (2005). The Mentor’s Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships. John Wiley & Sons, 2005.