Annual seminar held to empower local coaches
Nie Cele
Dozens of high school coaches benefited immensely from coaching experts during the last leg of the Powerade Perfomance Academy recently held at the Wanderers Country Club in Johannesburg.
The final session followed a successful run of academies in Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.
The energetic school coaches went home pregnant with knowledge and skills on effective coaching imparted to them by a panel of experts.
The list of experts for the Johannesburg leg included; High Performance coach John McGrath, former national team goalkeeper and Supersport United goalkeeper coach, Andre Arendse, former Proteas Netball player and University Netball coach, Zanele Mdodana and Natalie Du Toit, Paralympics and Commonwealth Games gold medallist.
According to organisers, Powerade aimed much of its efforts on high school coaches in recognising their role as prime influencers of the next generation of South Africa’s sporting heroes.
Puso Makume, Powerade Sponsorship Manager is on record arguing that they hope all coaches will inspire their players to be always forward and continue to nurture the next breed of sports heroes.
“With the inclusion of coaching experts, Powerade has introduced school sport coaches to appropriate training, skills development and the importance of hydration.”
Speaking on Understanding the Role of Coaching, Andre Arendse, spoke on the importance of talent identification and identifying key areas of development.
“Coaches play an impactful role in shaping a well-rounded athlete and team player.” he said.
On the sidelines he told this publication, there is a need to look at development differently.
“Key component of development is to engage with parents. Because the information provided by them about their child can make it easier for you to handle and coach the child.”
The passionate university netball coach, Zanele Mdodana, spoke about the aspect of Changing the Game and Changing Lives which many of the high school coaches could relate to.
“The Powerade Academy gave the opportunity to share my journey I had taken with the Maties team and how we were able to change the players lives through changing the game which lead to the team coming together to seal a successful 2019 season. Through my experiences, it’s been imperative for players to hold one another accountable and create a coach-lead but player centric programme for their desired outcome.”
McGrath dialled the energy up with a practical session where he showed feats of strength and practical examples of breaking boundaries by bending nails, breaking chains, tearing packs of cards and breaking an adjustable wrench.
“These acts I do are all metaphors for what you can do and what is possible. Everyone has an inner voice that prevents us from achieving our goals and it is up to us to decide if we would like to listen to that voice or not.
“The subject of shifting sports paradigms is one to help coaches of any level understand that to achieve certain things, coaches need to train players to abandon preconceived ideas that people have about their abilities and about what is conceived as a boundary.”
On the sidelines he told this publication every human being is born with a gift and very few of them follow that gift.
“Follow and put everything to that gift and don’t let anyone take it away from you. Surround yourself with good people and you will learn and grow from them,” McGrath argued.
du Toit spoke about how to get the best out of your athlete through coaching and mentoring.
“Coaching and mentoring is a topic spoken about more often at International Olympic and Paralympic committees. Think about the two concepts and see what role they can play with the teams you coach.”
Pressed to elaborate more she said, as Coach It’s important to believe in your athlete and take him or her in your journey.
“A down athlete needs support. As a coach you need to be flexible and be able to pull them back when they are making aggressive moves,” du Toit argued.
For more information, visit Powerade Facebook page (@PoweradeZA)
(Photos by Sydney Seshibedi/Gallo Images)
