Equestrain Sport NZ Coach Educators Conference Report

ESNZ Coach Educators Conference 30^th/31^st July 2011 Report from Jeanette Garrett
                                                                       At
The Sport and Rugby Institute – Massey University Palmerston North
 
This conference was financially supported by Olympic Solidarity and the NZ Olympic Committee.
The facilities available to us were ideal with conference rooms, dining, a gymnasium and accommodation all in the same complex with the Massey equestrian unit a few strides away for practical sessions with horses and riders.
A small conference of only 16 equestrian coach educators of the 36 in New Zealand. However all where top NZ performance and elite coaches from the four Olympic disciplines – eventing, show jumping, dressage and endurance.
 
The conference started with a ‘farewell’ to Siobhan Lapthorne  in her role as coach development manager has made considerable advancement in producing coaching training in the form of 4 levels of qualification recognised world wide – starting at introductory, development, performance and the almost completed elite coach levels. This work gives us a sound progressive system for the future. Siobhan heads back to her home land in Australia to work with a surf and life saving organisation.
 
The entire conference was about the ‘how to ‘ of sports coaching giving us new learning and ideas to share with the coaches we work with. There where high levels of motivation from our presenters which was infectious and this has inspired me to grow my project of a ‘top of the South’ equestrian coaches network.
 
The presenters were :-
 
Dennis Slade – Senior Lecturer – Massey University – international hockey player. A world expert on ‘games based coaching’ and currently presents at international conferences.
 
Gary Hermansen – PhD Psych – Sports Psychologist. Editor of the International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling. Gary has undertaken sports psychology roles for Olympic campaigns for New Zealand including the equestrian world games. Gary has just written an excellent book – ‘Going Mental’ in Sport: Managing Your Mind to Excel’ which is now available from www.equinepositvelearning.co.nz online book shop.
 
Bruce Blair – Coach Performance Adviser to NZ Academy of Sport Bruce has fulfilled roles of head coach of the Northern Knights and assistant coach for the black caps. He has played numerous one day cricket internationals for New Zealand. Saturday night in the lounge with Blair was an experience not to be missed!!!
 
Mike McLaughlin –  Director – McLaughlin Sport Consultancy - led the conference. Mike has led over 200 client groups in all facets of management and development including the Olympic Committee, International Cricket Council, UK Sport, Australian Rugby Union, and swimming. Mike was engaged to assist with the development of the Equestrian Sport NZ coaching work books in 2001 and has delivered coach educator training and assessments in NZ and works with our Elite coaches.
 
Bruce Blair  ( a rare character if ever there was one!!) set us the challenge / home work to ‘describe an ideal equestrian environment for coaches’ an ideal chance to grow and develop my  plan to create a coaches network system for TOS. Blair and Mike have offered me support and mentoring for this project (free)  I have since had meetings with Sports Tasman to get this new project started.
 
Our practical sessions were based around scenario’s set by Dennis Slade – working with an individual rider each group chose a subject to coach to demonstrate ‘game based’ activities. I have found that several coaches that I work with struggle with this concept so it was a great opportunity to get new ideas from others about this.
 
I feel it is just the sport terminology that confuses – ‘games based’ – we would call this ‘activities’ and ‘drills’ we would call ‘movements’ once interpreted in this way things become much clearer. My group consisted of Cheski Brown, Toni Grey and John Stephens. Our horse and rider hailed for m Nelson – Alana Alexander with her young horse Coachman. Each session was filmed and replayed to everyone afterwards.
 
The practical work we did with Blair was very interesting – his whole approach was around questioning ideas for ‘rider centred’ training.
 
We watched one rider for about 10 15 mins. and then completed a form as to what we thought we would work on with this horse and rider combination. These sheets where handed in and added to other sports data and the next day we received feedback as to the questions Blair asked the rider and how the answers she gave him compared to what- we the coach had given him.
 
Apparently the % was very low as to what the rider felt were her key issues i.e.  where and what she felt she needed to work on were quite different from the coaches perspective. Nothing surprising there we thought! However the point of the exercise was to identify what the rider felt they wanted and the discussion and question that need to happen for a ‘rider centred’ approach to coaching. Coaches need to identify where the rider is at -mentally focus, what is at the forefront of their agenda. This would then create what I call the 3 way triangle of equestrian coaching -- horse, rider coach. Now we have ‘the square’ of equestrian coaching – horse, rider, coach and coach mentor.
 
After each of the presenters sessions we had a work book for feedback to complete based on the WHAT ( impartial) , SO WHAT (reflective) and NOW WHAT (changing/applying – what am I going to do with this information. ‘What am I going to change?’, ‘How will I make it change?’, “When will I make the change?”  which gives ownership, motivation and commitment).
 
Mike McLaughlin had an excellent way of giving feedback to each presenter using this method a very effective approach to giving feed back as to what he had got from each session and identifying what he would use and when. Inspiring stuff!!!
In our down time we worked out in the great gym and met ‘in the lounge’ to chew over the days events and just to network with each other – very valuable time – the gold of the conference for me. So much was gained from this networking to make this the best conference I have attended since my emigration to NZ 18 years ago.
 
To find out more about The Equestrian Sport NZ Coaches Training and Development click here