Colorado Springs, CO - USA Archery hosted its first Coaches Workshop September 10-11 in Colorado Springs at the USA Archery headquarters. The first of its kind, the weekend brought in 35 coaches from all over the U.S. and international coaches from Germany and Curaçao.
The transformative and interactive workshop was led by:
The vision of the workshop was to improve the key skills all coaches need regardless of ability level. Krueger said, “We really wanted to flip the classroom in this workshop and have the participants be the ones doing most of the activities - learning through doing. We provide a lot of information on quality coaching through our symposiums and courses. For this workshop, I wanted to create a safe place where coaches could come together, practice the coaching skills they’ve heard about or read about, develop those skills, and walk away a better coach.”
The two-day workshop focused on developing a variety of “How to Coach” skills by removing the technical and tactical focus of teaching and isolating specific skills through deliberate practice. Facilitators observed tremendous growth in the participants as they practiced micro-coaching sessions, brainstormed, and worked in groups to develop their coaching ability.
Day one of the course concentrated on how coaches provide feedback to athletes utilizing push and pull coaching methods. Participants practiced, received feedback, and improved their ability to coach others. Day two focused on planning training and using creativity to design fun, engaging, and effective training sessions and activities through evidence-based coaching methods.
According to M.J. Rogers, who was one of the participants, “The USA Archery Coaches Workshop was thoughtful, innovative, and challenging. A sure paradigm shift, an excellent variety of information, and polished presenters. Don’t miss the next one! I sure won’t.”
Kyle Bissell who was one of the facilitators said, “While I am excited to see how our accomplishments from the Workshop impact the quality of how we coach and how that transforms coach and athlete experiences, satisfaction, and outcomes - I’m even more excited to be actively engaged in a community pioneering a pathway forward towards evidence-based practice. This is hardly the time for 'spectatoritis' or status quo, business-as-usual-coaching. We are moving the needle on what best practices in archery coaching look like and, therefore, need coaches dedicated to exploration, discovery, and adaptation around how they coach NTS. Athletes benefit when coaches grow, and the Colorado Workshop was a call to action.”
Participants at this year’s workshop included:
