Coaching and Care of Athletes

COACHING AND CARE OF ATHLETES For example, if an athlete is clumsy or dull-witted and does not seem to be making very much progress, that is the boy with whom you should take more trouble. After all, you are the person who will gain the credit if he does ultimately succeed. I think I received one of the biggest thrills of _my own coaching career from a youngster who was perhaps the. clumsiest performer in athletics who ever came my way. I liked the boy, and I had a tremendous admiration for his keenness and dogged detenp.ination to succeed, but heaven knows that nature had never, so far as I could see, intended that boy for any sort of athletic success! I do not think he could have been much more than :rline or ten years of age when I first saw him; but in the ten years that followed he certainly made himself into a fine type of young manhood. Noth– ing seemed to come right to that boy, who, I often thought, was left-handed on both sides of his body. Perhaps the very circum– stance of his not being able to find an event to suit him was the cause of his ultimate salvation. I certainly worked hard enough to encourage him, and we tried practically every event on the track and field programme, short of cross-country running and the Marathon. He did not seem keen ·about walking, so we also left that for~ of amusement alone. As I have said, I think that it was his very eagerness to try every event which gave him the fine all-round development he subsequently attained. In the long run he had his reward, for he won four County Championships in vastly different events, and up to the present has reached his high-water mark with an English District title. Even now I do not think that an English title is altogether beyond his compass. At any rate, he ought to get into one of our Junior A.A.A. International teams before he hangs up his spiked shoes for the last time. Again, at the appropriate period a coach should always be prepared to discuss all phases of athletics, to answer questions, ·and to give explanations. Athletes have any amount of blind faith in a good coach, but, all the same, the pupil will make progress a good deal faster if the coach will go to the trouble ofgiving him such explanations as will make him understand why he_is required to do a certain thing in a certain way. Such explanations seem to fix firmly in his mind the point upon which the youth is doubtful, and one usually sees an improvement in his style the next time he turns out for training. The coach should never do anything in a slipshod manner him- 78