Hi all, I'm sharing how we manage the children in the Juniors section; not the Teens, as I will post separately on this. This was sparked by some confusion, including mine, on moving children up to the top group in the Juniors.
We have over fifty children in the Juniors and they range generally from 8 to 11 years old, i.e. are primary school children. To manage such a large number we need to split them up into Groups, so that we can differentiate the activities' challenge for the children each week, using more or less the same equipment. We have a number of parent helpers and so we can achieve a good (low) children to supervisor ratio and they can adjust hurdle spacings, heights, jump box heights, med ball weights, etc. for children with vary different capabilities.
We have four groups:
Dolphins - for the youngest and newest children
Jaguars - for children with some experience
Panthers - older children with experience
Eagles - the most experienced and capable, whom we monitor to determine when they should move up to the Teens group. We also offer them a 15 minute extension to the 45 minute session, so they get experience of training for an hour, as the Teens do.
Yes - we did name them after NFL teams
We generally use two halls / areas for training the children. We can do this as we have sufficient competent helpers / coaches. We need two venues as it's not much fun with too many children in the same hall or space. It increases the risk of accidents and the likelihood of inappropriate behaviour between children as supervision becomes difficult. So we put two groups together in each space and for pretty obvious reasons this means Dolphins train with Jaguars, and Panthers with the Eagles, except for the 15 minute extension. We swap the combined groups in the spaces, e.g. Dolphins and Jaguars might do 15 minutes outside running, after the warm-up, and them move into the Sportshall where the Panthers and Eagles have been training for the last 15 minutes..
As we develop the Juniors, we are increasing the metrics we are using to enable us to move towards a more performance based approach for their progression through the Groups rather than just an age basis, This is not just who can jump the highest but who is actually doing the activities in the right way with the right attitude, so that they're progression is from the training, not just from growing up. Therefore, factors we assess, are:
how frequently do they attend training and
do they engage appropriately with
the activities,
the other children and
the supervising adults.
performance improvement, e.g. how high can they jump compared to last time we measured it.
Woody Allen said a large part of success in life is from just turning up, and he's right. The Training Session is where the children are stimulated physically, mentally and emotionally; that enables the magic to happen when they recover, i.e. become stronger / faster, work out how to replicate their best performances and how to deal with set-backs.
We review membership of the Groups quarterly, using the above factors to determine who should move, recognising that there are some constraints on sizes of individual groups, or more correctly the two “super-groups” and the desire of some children to stay with the children they already know. We recognise this is an important aspect of participating in the Juniors athletics section, as it contributes significantly to the children's fun and we want them to enjoy the sessions, so that they wish to continue to do athletics and accrue all the benefits that transpire from that.
Lastly, when a child is in the Eagles Group, one of the key questions we're looking to answer, is "when should we move the child up to the Teens?". Similar to the move from Primary School to Secondary, this is quite a big transition. From being one of the oldest and so strongest, fastest, most skilled, they will now become the "babies" of the group again. We look therefore, at their physical, emotional and social capabilities before deciding to move them up. Obviously, this follows a discussion with the parent about their view on their child's ability to cope with the transition. We tend to make such moves to align with the school terms and our moves from being predominatnly indoor based to outdoors.
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