Overnight Success
Take home message
THE OVERNIGHT SUCCESS IS THE CULMINATION OF MAKING THE MOST OF EVERY OPPORTUNITY OVER A LONG TIME.
For Developing Coaches
Yes, you need knowledge, but coaching is a practical. Get out as early as you can and diversify, working with as many people as you can.
For Athletes
You may not realise, but you have a role in developing coaches too. Provide support and feedback to the young coach volunteering at your local club. You are both trying to get better.
“Your job. Or a job like it”.
That’s the answer I get when I ask exercise and sport science students what they want to do after their degree. I’ve just met this young man at his local hockey club. He is a nice guy, a 20-year old final year student and we’ve struck up conversation. Turns out he studies where I once did and we discuss where his degree is leading and what he is looking to next, when he delivers this response. I pause and try to deliver my reply gently. I know that working with an elite international team is both extremely fortunate and extremely rare.
“Well. It took me about 15 years of employment, first at an institute of sport then a professional rugby team after my post-graduate degree to get this role. I love it here and I’m not really in a hurry to give it up”, I say smiling. There’s a hint of shock in his face. This is not to crush his dream or belittle him. I am trying to illustrate the path and the commitment required, perhaps something he has not yet considered or been advised.
I’m a version of that 15 years overnight success. Just like every other Head S&C at an elite team.
Funny how two days later, one of the assistant coaches during a moment of downtime asked me a similar line of questioning about my path to be here at the Kookaburras. As I reversed the timeline of events, two features became clear. As I have probably mentioned, and I stressed to the student a few days earlier, I can trace my career path directly to my 3rd year university prac. That experience was invaluable for my next step, working at a colts WA Football League team, the rest, as they say, is history. The other feature that was also consistent was the networking. I’ve never been a deliberate ‘networker’, but it happens and is important whether you like it or not. S&C is a small world, the ‘smallness’ magnified in Perth! Do a good job and people will happily refer or put in a good word. The opposite is also true - be a dud and they will tell people that.
So this was the advice I gave the young man a few nights earlier - and it is the advice I give any exercise and sport science student. Don’t wait until you finish your degree to get experience. I asked him who he was currently getting experience with, knowing how he was going to answer. “The students in my class”. Yep - a lot of other 20 year olds who all speak the same, act the same and know what you know. I motioned to the pitch, his local hockey club. “Volunteer here. I’m sure the club would be grateful for your involvement”.
“Tonight,” I said, “I’ve had the opportunity to coach about 25 teenage girls and 10 teenage boys - at the same time, people that I have never met, through a warm-up and basic agility. Then assist an under-resourced club coach with their session (more on that later too). Before that session finished about 20 senior women, and then 20 senior men commenced their session and I took their warm-ups, before coming back to the juniors for some cool-down and a brief chat on injury risk reduction. All in the space of 2 hours. For you, at least this is your club, you have some level of relationship. What an experience for you communicating to a diverse range of people. That is a skill you cannot get at university and it is exactly the experience you need if you are to progress to a job like mine one day”.
Community clubs operate on the generous support of volunteers doing the absolute best they can for their love of the sport and contribution to their community. For young exercise and sport science students, these are fertile grounds for development with clubs willing to support and empower young, developing coaches with tremendous roles. Volunteering does not mean filling up water bottles and picking up cones (mind you, I do this too even at the elite level, so no one is above filling up bottles and tidying up). Volunteering means offering your time in return for experience. Offering does not mean free, but it might not mean paid. It might be that the club waives fees if you play there. Or the club can help you access discounts from club sponsors and suppliers. But I cannot recommend highly enough getting experience BEFORE you graduate, and I think many experienced coaches would say similar.
And getting such experience, I think, is pretty easy if you ask. The journey of a thousand miles - to that overnight success - begins with a single step.
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Thanks again. BA.