Abstract
Introduction
This interview with Dr Andy Gillham is a refreshing change as a reviewer. Learning from experiences of others is such an important part of personal development. As I read the interview, I was struck by Dr Gillham’s honest and candid replies to the questions, and I believe that there is such value in reading and learning from his stories. There were a few themes, however, that stood out for me as someone who is engaged in youth sport research.
Parents in youth sport
Dr Gillham shared an experience he had with a figure skating club. Specifically, the story referred to a strategy that coaches had developed to remove the negative influence of parents in the locker room. While I agree that there need to be strategies developed to manage input of parents, I believe that we need to be careful and more mindful of how coaches are incorporating parents meaningfully into youth sport programmes. Parents are critical agents in youth sport 1 ; if they are not engaged, it is an additional barrier to getting children and youth active. We need to think of ways to engage parents in positive ways. As an example and taking the example provided by Dr Gillham, another strategy may have been to have a parent assist a different child with the skates and encourage/require parents to share a positive thought with that child. In fact, parents could assist a different child at each practice and maybe they could be the ones to teach the child to tie his/her own skates. This type of simple engagement could change the dynamic of the building of relationships between the children and other adults within the sport environment and also encourage parents to be more mindful and positive. These types of intentional positive strategies are needed within the context of youth sport. 2 In fact, a resource such as Project “Sport Connect and Respect” (SCORE) (www.projectscore.ca) provides more examples for coaches to use to positively engage and connect parents in youth sport programming. 3
Soft skills in coaching
Another concept that stood out for me is the reinforcement that ‘athletes seemed most motivated by fun’. There has been wonderful work done that has been able to show how fun is manifested for youth in sport. 4 Positive coaching behaviours emerged as one of the top three areas where youth find fun in sport and these behaviours include (among others) encouraging the team, being knowledgeable, providing clear communication, being a positive role model and having a sense of humour. These skills are important for coaches to know and practice since sometimes these are not natural behaviours for some. 5 The development of ‘soft skills’ in coaching is a reoccurring theme throughout the interview with Dr Gillham. Coaching education programmes need to help coaches more with this and not only towards young athletes but also towards other coaches and parents as well. Scenario-based training might be the way to help with the growth and development of these skills.
Positive youth development
My final reflection in this interview highlights the importance of positive development throughout youth and into emerging adulthood. The personal skills and experiences that youth amass in youth sport participation need to continue, as they enter post-secondary education. There is emerging research working to produce measures to examine sport experiences in university/collegiate sport. 6 More needs to be explored in this realm, so that practitioners and researchers alike can get a better sense of the link between these two sport contexts (i.e., youth and collegiate).
Conclusion
This interview really does highlight the importance of evidence-based approaches to applied work. As a field, we need to read more about applied experiences in interviews such as this one in order to develop questions with practical implications. I personally look forward to reading more about the experiences of experts in the field. These reflections do allow for all those involved in create better sport experiences for youth, coaches and parents.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.