u1251321 PLACEMENT REFLECTION

INTORDUCTION In my placement I was coaching the Newham Flames, an amateur handball team that plays in the development league in London. I played handball for 10 years in Brazil before coming here and because of that I had lots of experience playing in most levels of handball in my country expect international level.The Flames are formed with many players from different countries, ages and levels of experience. The team aims to improve and someday get to the top league of handball in England. Handball is a contact team sport in which the main objective is scoring goal in the opponent's posts by throwing a ball. This sports requires running, jumping, speed, agility, also requires strength for defence, blocking shots and pushing. The game is very intense and players need to have a good aerobic capacity (GAROSTIAGA ET AL, 2004).

FACILITIES The team I was having my placement plays in a amateur league of handball however the place where the practices are held is very nice and we had plenty of equipment to use during the sessions and this means I could have a good condition to create nice sessions and try to develop the maximum work I could to the players. Having sports projects and good quality sports facilities is important because it can redevelop certain areas and also promote welfare. (CHAPIN,2004) According to The Scottish Government (2012) it is really important to have good quality facilities because in this way there are more chances to increase the number of participants in a specific physical activity. At the first time I was very surprised because I did not expected to have all that good stuff to work with, the court was amazing, we had cones, lot of balls in good condition. This is nice because back in home we do not have all that condition always and coming here and having all this conditions to develop a work keeps me very motivated to work and to pass some of my experience in the game of handball to the players.

CULTURAL ASPECTS

u1251321 In terms of cultural aspects London is a special city because it has so many cultures together in the same place, in a sports team it is no different there are always people from many different places and cultures. According to Smith (1991) it is crucial for sports leaders and coaches to stay conscious about multicultural issues and multiethnic experiences in relation to sports. For this reason it as a great challenge to me to adapt myself to coach in the best ways as possible in a way that all the players feel comfortable. Another important point is that some players were from countries where handball is really strong and competitive on the other hand there were people from countries in which handball is not so popular. At the beginning this dichotomy was really hard because some of the players were very experienced and having been playing for long years but others just started playing handball a year ago and for me was very hard to manage this difference during the sessions. However it was nice because the players could always aggregate something with their own experience in sports and we all could share good experiences during the time in the team. We had the opportunity to see many different aspects and point of views, some players preferred to their physicality and strength others were always looking for the collective game. Seems to be really cultural that some players preferred to look for defence first than attack, other believe that speed and pace is the most important part of the game.

LANGUAGE As being a non native speaker of English language and living in England for only 8 months before starting the placement I could say that the language was one of the barriers for me when coaching. In correlation with this when coaches can communicate good with the athletes they can improve their competencies and this is something very good for a team sport (SULLIVAN, 1993). Coaching is something really dynamic and sometimes as a coach you are supposed to talk a lot and of course delivery a lot of information to the players for this reason I tried to focus a lot in explaining things in a really clear way even though sometimes it was hard. But I think I could solve every problem I believe that I just spent more time than what a native speaker would do. Moreover another problem was the activities name and the specific vocabulary. Some activities have many different names depending where you are

u1251321 and for this reason I had to search a lot for the name of the drills and some of them I adapted to a name easy to remember, for example the "calf slaps" activity which was used as a warm up and involves running, agility and also a lot of fun. Sometimes I used to pick names of activities from other sports like the "give and go" which is very common in basketball but no that common in handball. According to my mentor I was supposed to express myself in a better way and more often spend more time explaining some activities because some of the players were not understanding the main objectives and therefore they were making mistakes. As I am shy delivering a session for people who were in the majority older than me was a little bit scary at the first time but as time was passing I was getting more confident and that helped me a lot.

TECHNIQUE Elite players a great range of refined technique which requires having a lot of experience in training and practicing technique for a long time so it becomes easy and natural (LAUDER, 2011). This being said it is clear that technique is something really important to players to develop their game. Fitness is also crucial but having fitness without technique does not match. Therefore I wanted to pass to the players as much technique I know about playing handball as a winger. I believe that emphasizing on game situations is a very significant way of developing technique because players should get used to game situations as well. In the session we used a drill called "Static 4m shooting" in which the players had to score a goal but they could only move theirs shooting arm and hand, no jumping, no three steps because I wanted to isolate the movement of their hand, the exercise was focusing on wrist precision and the right move of the hand so then when they jump in the air they know how to throw with more precision. Some players at the beginning had really bad problems with technique, they had a good running, good jumping but their technique with the ball in hands was not good. One of the most common errors was passing because they did not had the right timing and sometimes the pass was really bad. To Sheryn (2004) the good coaches are the ones who can identify the faults and set practices looking for fixing them. As we were going through the weeks passing was getting better not that much but at least during some activities we could see that the pass technique and

u1251321 timing was improved. Actually during some games situation we could see that some of the drills were really helping the players. One aspect that is really important and should be highlighted is that the youngsters tend to be more easygoing in terms of practicing technique and repetitions.

TACTICS Tactics are important in the game of handball because as being a team sport every player has a job in the court and tactics are responsible for the organization of the players in their jobs. Depending on the tactics a team can try to score as fast as possible using fast-breaks most of the times or the team can spend more time in attack to use a set play. Tactics define which kind of defence the team is going to on the court. Normally in handball the defences are 6-0 but depending on the tactics the team may play 5-1 or 4-2. For this reason the team needs to be prepared and aware of the tactics to use the most suitable during the match. Moreover tactical analysis is crucial because it can help to develop training programs and enhance the quality of the practices thus improving the playing quality of the team (GARGANTA, 2009). The team still has lots of problems with tactics and I believe the main reason for this is the mix of players who had long experiences with game with players who have small experiences or just started playing. Consequently putting this two complete groups of players together in the same team makes it hard to work on tactics, the team is putting a lot of effort together though. I identified that the team had a lack of communication and this was affecting the team play. I think that players should work more in pairs or trios so they get to know each other better and understand how each usually play consequently the game will smoothly. I tried to introduce some game play situations so the wingers could be the central point of the play but working together with other players in different positions of the court because the handball game is very dynamic and players should not be static to one place.

CONCLUSIONS The placement was very good, I did learn a lot during the time I was coaching and I was able to finally understand some things that I could not understand as a player. Looking to the practice with a new perspective is something really different and makes me think about many diverse parts of the game.

u1251321 I think that the coach's feedback was pretty interesting because it highlights some points I need to focus like communication, and explanation of the plays and drills and therefore it is going to make grow as a professional and coach.

u1251321 REFERENCES

Gorostiaga, E., M. C. Granados, J. Ibanez, And M. Izquierdo. Differences in physical fitness and throwing velocity among elite and amateur male handball players. Int. J. Sports Med. 25:18,2004.

The

Scotitish

Government.

(2012). Sports

Facilities. Available:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCultureSport/Sport/NationalStrategies/SportsFacilities. Last accessed 23rd Dec 2013.

Smith, Y. (1991). Issues and Strategies for Working with Multicultural Athletes. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance. 62 (3), 39-44. Sullivan, P. (1993). Communication skills training for interactive sports.. The Sport Psychologist. 7 (1), 79-91. Launder, A. (2011). Play Practice: the Games Approach to Teaching and Coaching Sports . Human Kinetics. 200 pages.

Chapin, T. (2004). Sports Facilities as Urban Redevelopment Catalysts: Baltimore's Camden Yards and Cleveland's Gateway. Journal of the American Planning Association. 70 (2), 193-209.

Sheryn, C (2004). Rugby for real the common sense trainning manual. London: AC Black. 180.

Garganta, J. (2009). Trends of tactical performance analysis in team sports: bridging the gap between research, training and competition. Revista Portuguesa de Cincias do Desporto. 9 (1), 81-89.

u1251321 Coaching Last Bastion of Academic Excellence?

Some people may say that coaching sometimes is teaching, a coach may be someone who teaches a sport to somebody. However in this text the authors made ii really clear that they see a big difference between teachers and the scholar coaches. The teachers are the ones who teach students but in a very open way not being so specific to an area and sometimes "teaching" something related to an area they do not actually know. On the other hand coaches are the ones who tend to be seeing as anti-intellectuals and to be more strict to their objectives consequently they prize for the ones who train harder and play better. A very good aspect that of the text is that even though teachers sometimes are working in areas that they do not really understand or teachers are teaching multiples contents to students, the coaches are always specific and precise. No one is going to call a football coach to coach a volleyball team, or call baseball coach who never tried a single tackle to coach the rugby team. In fact some teacher are supposed to facilitate students to learn however some teacher are being so open that they missing some points they should care. It is important to encourage the use of creativity by the young students and is important to understand the weakness of some students. But the teacher should try to preserve the students are talented as well and also stick to some points that are crucial because it is not that bad to show that a student is wrong and show the right way. Sometimes the teacher needs to teach the students the exact content they are supposed to teach. Teachers tend to put all the students in the same conditions as there is a movement called "one-size-fits-all" in which students both the top one and the slowest ones are consider exactly the same. Moreover according to Sharon Lynch (2001) this model of reform known as "one-size-fits-all" is a mistake and leads to failure because it cannot brace all the diversity of the students population. Stanley and Baines (2002) believe that if schools continue on the same way they will get to a point of homogenized mediocrity and will have students with lower grades. Coaches are always prioritizing their best players and focusing more and more in their best ones so they can have on the team their very best athletes. And this is largely acceptable as the first team is the most important team and should have better focus than the second, third and so on.

u1251321 Another point that should be highlighted is that unlike teachers, coaches normally look and reflect about their own work, to try to find something that is missing on the team, or to adjust something that is not right. Furthermore in most of the cases coaches are considered more experts in their areas than teachers thus if a coach states something it is more likely to have credibility than a teacher stating something. Coaches develop good moral aspects in their players when they relate to some situations that the live during the game or the practices (GATZ ET AL, 2002). In fact coaches really seem to be the last bastion of excellence because to the coaches excellence is crucial, they need to have always their best on the court, on the field, on the swimming pool. Consequently they take the quality of a sport to a such high level that there is no mediocrity and they make the players push harder on practice so they keep their levels up.

u1251321

REFERENCES Lynch, S. (2001). Science for All Is Not Equal to One Size Fits All: Linguistic and Cultural Diversity and Science Education Reform. Journal of research and science teaching. 38 (5), 622-627.

Stanley, G., Baines, L. (2001). Celebrating Mediocrity? How Schools Shortchange Gifted Students. Rooper Review. 25 (1), 11-13.

Gatz, M., Messner, M., Ball-Rokeach, S. (2002). Paradoxes of Youth and Sport. .: Suny Press. 277.