Jose Rizal Campus

Gov. W. Pascual Ave., Concepcion Malabon City, Philippines

Leadership of Youth
Sport Program

Prepared by:
Mariano, Joshua Marc Gabriel C.
 Table of content
Page
INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………….3
MAIN PART ………………………………………………………..4
OWNERSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITY …………………..5
ENCOURAGEMENT OF TEAMMATES ………………….5
ENFORCING RULES AND STANDARDS ……………….6
LEADING HUMBLY……………………………………………..6
CONCLUSION ……………………………………………….7
REFERENCES ………………………………………………8
INTRODUCTION
Youth Sports Leadership is a 3-year sports programme
designed to teach young people essential skills and behaviors
such as teamwork, leadership, and persistence in achieving a
goal. The programme, which is delivered through the Youth Sports
Trust, International, has already been delivered in over 60
countries where it has had an impact on the students and teachers
who take part.
It works by training teachers and coaches in learner-centered
coaching and mentoring skills that help them enable 15-16-year-
old students to become ‘young sports leaders’. These students
then go on to further develop their leadership skills by organizing
sports festivals in their cities and communities. This challenge
helps the students to develop essential skills for the future such as
teamwork, communication, leadership as well as build their
confidence in these areas.
This programme isn’t just for people who love sports, it is
specifically designed to be inclusive for all young people who want
to learn how to grow their leadership abilities, increase their
confidence and work more collaboratively in groups.
For decades, academic endeavors to understand the
dynamics of youth sports have shown tremendous contributions.
Youth sports are among one of the most influential pillars in the
development of adolescents (see Côté, 1999). Youth sports act as
a gateway for the growth and maturation of its athletes into fully
functional adults. This process is heavily guided and influenced by
the coaches and managers that are at the forefront of these young
athletes. This participation leads to important developmental
assets such as physical, cognitive, and social competencies (see
Côté, 1999). Additionally, the participation could provide a platform
where these young athletes could develop healthy self-esteem,
higher rates of pro-social engagement, academic success, and
development of character and life skills (Vella, Oades, & Crowe,
2013).
Given that, the purpose of this study is to conduct a
systematic review with a particular focus on investigating
leadership in youth sport. Understanding leadership in youth sport
is critically important both academically and practically as young
athletes are at a crucial point in their development not as an
athlete, but more importantly who they will become as adults.
Further investigation of it will provide invaluable insight as to the
role of leadership or abilities we need to do a better job for
teaching our athletes that contribute to a healthy and positive
developmental experience to them.

MAIN PART
When children and youth are enrolled in sports, it is believed
that they will benefit from their experience. Parents, coaches, and
school administrators often assume that in addition to physical
fitness, children and youth will acquire important life skills just by
being there (CitationGould, Carson, Fifer, Lauer, & Benham,
2009). However, initial research indicates that mere sport
participation does not guarantee life skill development, particularly
leadership.
Too many of our youth athletes today are missing out on this
process. In addition, we are sheltering our youth athletes more
within organized sports. Don’t like the team you made? We’ll move
you to a different one. Coach isn’t playing you on the first line?
Mom and dad will make sure the coach hears about it. We are
insulating our kids from the very adversity that helps produce
leadership and character qualities we all want our youth athletes to
learn.
Ownership and Responsibility
Perhaps the biggest and most detrimental consequence to
leadership skills that our modern sports culture has created is the
lack of ownership and responsibility among players. Too often, I
will see players skate off the ice at the end of practice while a few
coaches pick up pucks, put cones away, throw dividers back over
the boards, and gather up any other practice items. Other times, a
coach will switch a drill from one corner to another as every player
moves, the pucks and cones stay put. The coach is left to work it
all out, wasting precious ice time to set up a drill that would take
mere seconds to set up if the players took ownership of it. To fix
this, we need to start delegating leadership tasks to youth athletes
by the time they are nine or ten years old.
Encouragement of Teammates
Transactional leadership is the ability to get a group to do a
simple, routine task, like leading a warm-up. A more
transformational form of leadership requires a leader to approach a
sullen teammate and help pick them up. What do you say to a
player disappointed by their spot on the team? Or to a teammate
that is having a tough time at school, perhaps being bullied, and
seems to have lost interest in the sport? It is hard to imagine how a
youth athlete could respond to such a situation if they’ve never
been asked to take on the most basic leadership tasks. Even after
mastering those, encouraging a peer or group of peers is not easy.
Coaches need to provide direction at first. Find the opportunity
when a teammate is down and talk to a leader about how to solve
it. Before issues even arise, talk with your leadership group about
potential problems and how they can respond. Set aside time to
digest the leadership problems facing your team.
Enforcing Rules and Standards
When a peer isn’t playing hard, listening like they should, or
misbehaving in some way, there are few leaders in youth sports
with the ability to enforce the team standard. It’s certainly not easy
but this is something we want our youth athletes to be able to do.
Perhaps the most common example of where this type of
leadership is needed with bullying. Bullying is generally an act of
insecurity. The bully, insecure about his or her own place in the
group, lashes out against someone perceived to be lower than
them. It takes courage for a leader to step up and intervene, but
that is the standard we should expect from our athletes.
Leading Humbly
It’s a tougher job today to raise youth athletes that are
humble and hardworking. The prevailing youth sports culture
glorifies eight-year-old skaters for their “skills”. They are given
public recognition throughout the year, amplified by social media.
All of this gives them a warped sense of self-identification and self-
worth. Is it no wonder we lack leaders that serve their teammates
and team before themselves? Not at all. And I don’t blame the kids
for this. We’ve created this monster and it is our job to fix it. To
combat the noise out there, coaches and associations need to
direct constant messaging to their youth athletes that help put the
sport in proper perspective and encourage athletes to be humble
servant leaders.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, socializing, being a part of a team, self-
realization, are all traits that are fading in today’s youth in order to
create a better future for our youth, it is now, more than ever,
important to enroll children in early, youth sports as it has many
positive benefits. There are a lot of adversarial forces that make
our job as coaches and mentors harder than in the past. That’s
why we need to address leadership training with greater purpose,
resolve, time, and energy. We need to set aside the time, coach up
our coaches, and communicate with parents on how to do this.
REFERENCE
Côté, J. (1999). The influence of the family in the development of
talent in sport. The Sport Psychologist, 13, 395-417.

Vella, S., Oades, L., & Crowe, T. (2013). A pilot test of

Vella, S., Oades, L., & Crowe, T. (2013). The relationship between
coach leadership, the coach– athlete relationship, team success,
and the positive developmental experiences of adolescent soccer
players. Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 18(5), 549–561.

Gould , D. , Carson , S. , Fifer , A. , Lauer , L. and Benham , R.

https://coachad.com/articles/leadership-issues-facing-youth-sports/