Hi there, 

I hope you are doing well and you are tackling your challenges and reaching your goals. 

This is a series of reflections from life as a coach of children and young people where I share some of the challenges that I face and offer some solutions that I am going to adopt. This is a behind the scenes look at the challenges and struggles I face as I try to take all of the stuff I have learned about coaching and talent development and try to apply it in a real world context. 

This week is the challenge of being asked to make assessments on players without having all of the information to be able to do this effectively. 

We have just completed session 4 of our talent academy work and the governing body is asking us to make assessments on players as to weather they should continue within the programme or not. 

I am not happy about this....

I feel that we are being asked to make these kind of assessments without being given time to get under the skin of these players to really see how high their potential ceiling is. I would only be going on snapshots or snippets right now and I am uncomfortable doing that. I firmly believe that if we are to make decisions about these kids future sporting careers then we need the most information possible so that we aren't being 

Some of the players that are identifiable as being the 'best of our group' and obvious candidates for further selection might also be at the top of their potential ceiling or what Neil McCarthy, the Leicester Tigers Academy Manager calls 'Fools Gold'. These players are very persuasive, they look a million dollars but there are probably players in our group who don’t look that good right now but they may have huge potential because they haven’t had the same opportunities as the others.

If one player has been playing for years, gone to the right school, been coached at the right club then it stands to reason that they would look a lot better than someone without that kind of background. But if there isn’t a huge amount between them in terms of ability then we have to ask the question, who has the most potential?

This is why back story is so important as it gives the context to be able to accurate assess talent or potential. My hope is that if we have enough time with the players that we can look into this in some detail and get a fuller picture of them. In so doing we might spot a few 'golden eggs'.

So I have been thinking about how we can solve this problem. We could…

• Have Skype call with each of them and find out a little bit more about them         on a 1 to 1 basis. 
• Use an online survey to get a few extra back story questions answered.
• Give them an assignment to write a short article telling us their story. (We           could/should kick this off by posting ours first).
• Get them to send us a video with their back story
• Use some kind of personal analysis sheet to get them to self-assess and use     as a benchmarking tool 
• Some or all of the above

I would be interested to hear any suggestions that you might have that could help with this challenge. 

Alternatively please feel free to write to me with a challenge or issue you are facing and I will do my best to help in any way I can. I am able to 

Happy coaching, enjoy the struggle!

Stuart

P.S. My mission is to try and share my experiences with as many people as I can so if you found this mail useful at all then please help me to reach some more people by sharing this.

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