Football South Coast reveals new Coaching Development Program

 Football South Coast is set to unveil its new Coaching Development Program that targets the development of youth football in the Illawarra region.

The new initiative will target the 25 junior football clubs in the area with an eye to improving the standard of coaching young players receive.

“We all agreed that we needed to improve the grassroots and youth level coaching in the Illawarra,” said Jonathan Forster, the Assistant Technical Director at Football South Coast.

“We found that a lot of the people coaching are volunteers, which is great, but unfortunately they often don’t have the basic coaching education and safety awareness needed to coach effectively.

“Our idea is essentially that we will now put a system in place that allows us to filter coaching information to the local junior clubs so they can run training sessions with an eye to safety, fun and ensuring the kids get a learning outcome from it.”

The program will adhere to the FFA approved National Coaching curriculum with planned training sessions being distributed to the coaches.

25 coaching co-ordinators will be appointed and act as a coaching representative to each participating club.

Each month, the coaching representatives will attend coaching sessions put on by the FSC coaching staff in an attempt to keep them updated.

Representatives will then return to their local club and pass on the lessons to the coaches there.

The long term goal of the program is to see that eventually all coaches in the Illawarra region have the appropriate qualification to coach.

“This is the way football needs to go in this country, in terms of development, so we think it’s very important to get everyone on board,” said Football South Coast Technical Director Glenn Fontana.

“We’re probably one of the most advanced associations in Australia and our setup gives us this opportunity to spread the coaching gospel.

“This program gives us the opportunity to get into these junior clubs and help the coaches, parents and kids to understand the game of football better.”

Using the Secret 2 Sports (S2S) online coaching tool, Forster and Fontana will be able to design and structure coaching sessions each week for the junior clubs.

Coaches will then be able to login and use these catered sessions to provide a higher quality of coaching to their teams.

By improving the standard of coaching the region, FSC is hopeful that the quality of junior player will steadily increase.

“The sessions we give them will be structured in safety, fun and learning outcomes as is standard with the National Curriculum,” said Forster.

“We’re giving them the resources they need to succeed as a coach at the junior level because it’s our responsibility as a Football Association to ensure every child who plays in the Illawarra gets a certain level of coaching.

“Representatives won’t just be given their licenses and then left on their own, we will be constantly updating and training them in the hopes that they can one day assist with our development at an elite level.”

If you are passionate about coaching and wish to further your knowledge and act as a representative to your local club, please contact your club or Football South Coast and express your interest.

 

Story by Julian Keith