The Complete Guide To Developing
Highly Successful Sports Leaders In Your School
(and Why That's Important For You and Your School)
The Sports Leader Role Is A Highly Desirable Role
Sports Leadership is a highly desirable role in your school. It attracts the most selfless children to step forward and help your school in many ways.
However it’s a leadership role that’s often misunderstood, not utilized to its full potential and has high attrition rates.
So how can you ensure you avoid these common mistakes? And how can you ensure you provide the best program without having to waste time and spend a small fortune in training? The answer is….
By implementing a comprehensive Sports Leadership Program.
In this article we’ll look at three key things. They are (you can click the links below to jump straight to the section that interests you most):
- What a successful sports leadership program looks like
- What successful sports leaders are capable of
- Why that should matter to your school and your school community
What a successful sports leadership program looks like
Your sports leaders are an important asset for your school and community. They dedicate their play and lunch times to encourage a healthier, safer, more active, social and friendly playground. A successful sports leaders program will train your sports leaders to a level where they become ambassadors for healthy, active lifestyles.
All key ingredients to create a harmonious playground and school environment where children can play safely, have fun, engage socially, burn off energy and be ready to learn when they return to class.
Highly trained sports leaders bring all this and so much more to your school. They are shining examples of model behavior that you want and expect in your school. They will support and enhance your school ethos and culture and help you drive change.
A highly successful program looks like this:
- Organized training for each sports leader, tracked and monitored so they know what they’ve learnt
- Training that is logically organized that takes your sports leaders through the A to Z of successful sports leadership, building their confidence and knowledge at every step
- Teacher resources and free teacher training so teachers and TAs have the confidence to run the program
- Simple to use so everyone learns quickly without fuss
- A hybrid program with some online learning but heavily focussed on live, practical assignments that allow each sports leader to put their knowledge in to action
- Sports Leaders should have a constantly developing bank of games and activities so no one runs out of ideas
- It should include a gamification system that lets sports leaders earn rewards, points and ranks for completing modules, keeping them engaged
- There should be fun quizzes that recap and embed learning so knowledge is sustained throughout
- Life-skills like communication, teamwork, problem solving, encouraging each other and much more should be included in the program
The above is just a small glance at what should be in your sports leader program. But unfortunately, many programs fall well short.
This results in bored and disengaged sports leaders who don’t fulfil their potential and don’t create the impact they wanted to (or you wanted them to). And your school and playtimes suffer because of it.
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In short, relying on a insufficient or no program at all only costs you more time and effort recruiting more sports leaders and engaging staff. They end up disengaged and you’re in a vicious cycle. You end up wondering if it’s worth it at all.
But don’t give up –Â it is worth it.
Let’s look at how to implement a highly successful sports leader program and how this can be a game-changer for your school and community.
What successful sports leaders are capable of
High quality training for your sports leaders is a wise investment. In just a few weeks you’ll start see a return on that investment that may even surprise you.
Here’s how the Young Leaders Academy’s sports leader program, called Reach for the Stars, is helping sports leaders in schools across the globe….
Understanding Their Role
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Yes, sounds so obvious, but in the 12+ years we’ve been training sports leaders you’d be surprised at how few of them truly understand the significance of their roles. And amid the post-pandemic crisis, this role is only gaining more importance. So it’s imperative your sports leaders know who they are, what they represent and how big an impact they can make .
Once your sports leaders understand their role and all the different facets of the role, they become more confident, deliver higher quality content in the playground and will even begin organizing whole school sports events, maybe even inter-school sports events. Wow!
Not only that, we expect them to design and deliver community activities too. Creating links in the wider community and building your school brand at the same time. Win, win!
A comprehensive program should walk your sports leaders through each different skill, show them the importance of that skill and help your students put it in to context. For example, one of the key skills your sports leaders should learn is how to ‘session plan’ and how to effectively design and develop fun playground activities.
Once a student learns how to do this they will gain many other skills, including taking responsibility for their activities, promoting the activities throughout the school, leading a team in those activities, organising their session, time-keeping and so much more. And only a comprehensive, well thought out sports leader program can show them this in a way they understand and can run with. Â
Communicating with Confidence
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As with any leadership role, communication is a key component. If you’re a good communicator you’ll be highly successful, however if not then even your most amazing ideas will fall on deaf ears.
With the Reach for the Stars program there’s a Communications module that shows exactly how your sports leaders can use:
- different forms of communication to deliver their message
- get across complex ideas quickly and easily
- how to use the right type of language
- how to develop the right tone of voice
- how to use body language, facial expression and gestures
The program encourages sports leaders to present their ideas, concepts, physical activities in many different ways so every child, no matter how shy they may initially be, becomes an effective communicator that has impact.
This will improve their school performance too. After finding their voice, they will have a new-found confidence that will improve their attainment in other core subjects.
Planning and Preparing
Another key skill of sports leadership is the ability to organize. A plan with the right preparation, executed with confidence can change the course of history – or at least the model behavior you want in your playground. Sports leaders that can plan and prepare effectively will have a greater impact on- engagement rates
- behavior management
- fun
- retention
- time keeping
Monitoring progress, Tracking performance
Each teacher receives a Group Leader login status which allows them to monitor progress, approve work, award points and track each sports leaders progress. This is a very important measuring tool that helps you keep track, run reports and get instant feedback of how your sports leaders are doing. And sports leaders love it when they get extra points for great work – who doesn’t! You can award extra points for behaviour, attitude, exceptional work and so forth. Your Group Leader status also allows your teachers to do basic admin tasks with ease. Updating, running reports and user access control is a breeze.Why a Comprehensive Sports Leader program should matter to your school and your school community
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As we’ve seen, a highly comprehensive sports leader program that is easy to run can provide some incredible benefits to both the sports leaders taking part, the children they will impact and the effect it has on the health and wellbeing of the whole school.
After all, playtimes can be a highly stressful part of school life and a well-organized, highly trained set of sports leaders will be worth their weight in gold – literally – in helping you manage that time.
However, there’s more to it.
Your sports leaders can even go on to provide community programs in local care homes, kindergartens and nurseries. They’ll have that confidence now.
And these transformational events and community outreach are integral to building your school brand, showing the local community that you care and provide more than the standard education that every other school provides. It sets you, your students and your school apart.
Setting the bar high for your sports leader program will attract attention from the local press, uplift your profile and build your schools brand in the wider community. There are so many talking points that can be showcased in your school newsletter, press releases and school communications.
High quality enrichment programs are highly valued by parents
Many parent wants their child to come out of school being a confident communicator with leadership potential.
So, parents are eager to put their child in to activities that build their confidence and their ability to communicate effectively.
Parents understand the real-world value of these life skills and that’s an opportunity for you to further engage parents in to your school and build bridges with the wider community.
Having their child on the Reach for the Stars sports leader program is a huge bonus and one that each parent will be keen to support.
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How to Get Started
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- Book your free product demonstration / meeting here
- Email us with your questions to info@youngleadersacademy.co.uk
- Call and speak to one of our friendly advisors +447961181967