Good practice material

Good Practice Material

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The cities of Karlskrona Sweden, Klaipeda Lithuania, Gdynia Poland and the Swedish sport educational organization SISU Idrottsutbildarna Blekinge.

Prevention of Youth Drop-­‐Outs in Sport (PYDOS) 2013-­‐12-­‐03 Gdynia Name: Gdynia Sport Centre Contactperson: Agata Szparagowska Address: Olimpijska 5/9, Gdynia Region/Subregion: Trójmiejski Country: Poland Phone: +48 502 613 135 Email: a.szparagowska@gosirgdynia.pl

Klaipeda Name: Klaipėda city municipality Contactperson: Aistė Brazauskaitė Address: S. Daukanto g. 24, Klaipeda Region/Subregion: Klaipedos apskritis Country: Lithuania Phone: +370 46 40 17 20 Email: aiste.brazauskaite@klaipeda.lt

Karlskrona Name: Municipality of Karlskrona Contactperson: Tittie Österström Address: Östra Hamngatan 7B, Karlskrona Region/Subregion: Blekinge län Country: Sweden Phone: +46 455 30 37 55 Email: tittie.osterstrom@karlskrona.se

SISU Idrottsutbildarna Blekinge Address: Arena Rosenholm, 371 55 Karlskrona, Region/Subregion: Blekinge län Country: Sweden Phone: +46 (0) 455 -­‐ 367650

Good Practice Material This good practice material is a part of the project PYDOS (Prevention of Youth drop-­‐outs in Sport). The PYDOS project is part-­‐ financed by the European Union (European Regional Development Fund) and is a cooperation between the cities of Karlskrona in Sweden, Gdynia in Poland and Klaipeda in Lithuania and the Swedish sport educational organization SISU Idrottsutbildarna Blekinge. The aim of the project is to prevent youth drop-­‐outs in sport. The material is an assembly of good practices and examples on how to work with preventing youth drop-­‐outs in sport from the partners in the project.

The good practice material from the partner Karlskrona in Sweden contains four different examples of sports clubs and confederations that have found different ways to work with improving their youth activities to keep them in sport. The good practice material from the partner Klaipeda in Lithuania contains a survey with several coaches from different sports, containing their opinions on the topic of drop-­‐outs which is giving good examples on how to work with prevention of drop-­‐outs. The good practice material from the partner Gdynia in Poland contains four examples from soccer, basketball and table tennis about how the sport clubs actions have a positive impact on keeping children and youth in sports. Each city is the authors of their own material and the material has then been processed and compiled by SISU Idrottsutbildarna Blekinge. The good practice material has focus on youths with all kinds of ambition levels making the good practices both focusing on keeping youths on grass-­‐root level and youths of elite level.

Karlskrona Sweden The good practice material from Karlskrona in Sweden is collected from The Swedish Sport Confederations website (www.rf.se). They have there collected good examples from sports clubs in Sweden.

Svedala Tennis Club The tennis club in Svedala in Sweden is a sports club that has evolved a lot and has in just a several years doubled their members, particularly with children and youths. The club has worked in several ways to get to where they are today. One of the premises they started with was the reflection that it was easier to recruit new players than keeping the old ones.

To solve this problematic they partly focused on leadership. Svedala pointed out that it is incredibly important to have the right leader to the right group, especially since tennis is such a technical difficult sport. They have instead of going the usual way, were the youngest leaders train the youngest players, started to look at what leaders and players fit each other due to the leaders competence. For example, they have a 15-­‐year-­‐old coach who is training the group with 12-­‐13 year old players, this because he is great at tennis and is great at teaching younger players. The normal thing might have been to make him train the youngest children, but due to his skills and competence he was more suited for training youths even though he himself is a youth.

Svedala tennis club has also started to cooperate with the schools in the area to enhance their position as the obvious choice for children and youths who wants to participate in sport. At the schools they conduct lessons in tennis, and is here dividing the classes in half so that they can help every youth and keep a high quality on the lessons. They also have a “try-­‐ out-­‐tennis-­‐week” before each semester and have an open intake all year around so that you can start during a semester I you would like. They also establish a contract between each player, parent and leader that is based on the consistency of ambition. This because it´s often a difference in what the player and parents wants, were its sometimes the players who have the highest ambition and sometimes it´s the parents. If they can agree from the start they can also create the best conditions for the children or youth to play tennis. This also helps the leaders to get the best out of every athlete and ease for them to put together groups with the same ambitions. And no matter what your ambition might be, you are welcome to play.

The Swedish Confederation of Varpa Varpa is an old outdoor game. The game dates back to the Viking age and is today played in Gotland together with several other medieval Viking games. The confederation of Varpa is one of the confederations to emphasize the importance of youth’s opinions and knowledge.

They have therefor started a youth council within the confederation to increase their influence and involvement. They believe that if the sport shall continue to grow they need youths. Because if it´s just the adults who takes the decisions the sport will die. And the decision to install a youth council has been successful. The youth council has for example started a new form of competition were you just play two matches at the time (usual there are several) were there music is played during the matches. This has resulted in a lot more of attention to each match and not just on the most important senior matches. The music has also created an added value, which gives a feeling of forward spirit and event. This has not just been appealing to the youths but also to the seniors who would love to se more competitions like this in the future. Through joint arrangement between youth council and sports clubs it has also started initiatives and projects. The confederation has helped with support, tips and advice from past project experiences and thus enhanced the projects that are often very successful. The general of the confederation is one of the persons who has supported the youth council and thinks that if you give the youths some trust they is capable of anything.

Spårvägen Swimming Club The swimming club Spårvägen in Sweden has during the last years made a several efforts in various projects which has pay of for instance a huge increase in members of the club. In just five years they have gone from 1200 to 3000 members due to the fact that the projects has given then great recruitment opportunities. The vision for the swimming club has been to have grass-­‐root sport to reach the top, meaning that they welcome everyone who wants to swim to create a width within the swimmers to be able to develop a group of elite swimmers. The club is therefor very caring about those who don´t wants to train a lot but still wants to be a part of the club. Therefor they tries to keep the youths in the club for as long as possible even if they are not able or wants to train every time, because they could be potential leaders in the future. They also think it´s very important to have a high quality at the trainings and to recruit highly engaged and educated trainers. Seen to some of the projects Spårvägen has been a part of they have; offered free of charge swim education in schools to elevate the swimming skills, offered swimming during holidays and vacations to reach children who hasn’t swum before and show them the potential of being a member of a sports club, recruited an leader who spoke Arabic to reach children who doesn’t speak Swedish to strengthen integration, focused on injury prevention in their training and educated their trainers on several levels.

Dalby GIF soccer club Dalby GIF is a soccer club in Sweden who has a good basic operation with involved and committed players and leaders. But despite this they had a problem with lots of girls dropping out of soccer in the age of 13-­‐15 years. They decided to break this pattern and therefor established cooperation with the soccer club Grenarps IF. They here found out that it wasn’t just enough with members who thrived and a good base in the club. The problem lay in the fact that they had an operation that was based on a traditional compound where boys and men's teams have been standards and where they unconsciously only driven on without questioning those standards. The two clubs now started to help each other to develop their operation, not with a merger but with an cooperation with goals and purpose, to offer more training on different levels of ambition, all around the year and with a focus to seize the social part in soccer. They think that the key is to think through what you wants to do and why. And by being two clubs they have a possibility to do more. For example, they are cooperating with a former national-­‐team goalkeeper to help the goalkeepers in the team to raise their self-­‐esteem and visualize their importance on the field. And by putting focus on the girls, they can se that the whole club has developed. They also emphasize the importance of having all of the leaders on board in an initiative like this. The club also has some tips, these are; always put the children and youths need in place number one, make sure that the work you are doing is long-­‐term and don’t expect results over one night – be patient, and realize that there is no right or wrong because every club is unique were you have to develop the individuals as well as the teams.

Klaipeda Lithuania The good practice material from Klaipeda in Lithuania is based on research and a survey that highlights some leaders opinions on drop-­‐outs in sport and how they are working to solve the problem.

Research indicates that only 10 per cent of Klaipeda’s residents (with total population of 158000) participate in sport. This is a very strong signal, which causes disquiet among public health professionals. Lack of action regarding this issue may increase the risk of heart disease and mortality among young people. The consequences of disregarding sports and health issues can cost dearly. Klaipeda city politicians in order to promote sports development have taken steps in implementation of sports reform. Klaipeda City Public Health Bureau initiates projects that offer free invitations for Klaipeda residents to join various sports activities; moreover, it creates social advertising and carries out educational work with young people about bad habits, such as smoking, drinking alcohol and drug use.

PYDOS project is one of the city projects, which may contribute to the Klaipeda youth sports occupancy level. By analyzing the situation of sports activity in Klaipeda, coaches of the following sports have been interviewed: football, basketball, swimming with acrylic glass, Roman and Greek wrestling, orienteering and artistic gymnastics. The purpose of the survey is to define what makes their young athletes to stay and what makes them to leave a particular sport. Also what methods are applied during the training and how their work pays off. The survey involved 21 coaches.

Which factor plays the most important role in motivating your children to attend your sport?

Popular sport -­‐34,6%

Famous athlets -­‐ 19,3%

Trainer qualificasons -­‐ 7,6%

Willingness to parscipate in compessons, to compete -­‐ 11,5%

Acquiring new skills -­‐ 11,5%

Physical and emosonal sassfacson, Sports -­‐ Health -­‐ 11,5%

Earn a lot of money -­‐ 4 %

The majority of coaches said that the following factors motivate children the most: sports competitions, international tournaments, trips, sports popularity and sports tradition. A small percentage claimed that children come to acquire certain skills (e.g. learn to swim in order to have graceful posture). Some of the coaches said that parents bring children to sports to develop their qualification or achievements. Others deliberately said that sport first of all is good for physical and emotional well-­‐being; moreover, most of the times, in some sports children are exercising out of doors, in the open air.

What methodologies do you use to motivate children to stay in your sport?

Factors of moUvaUon Seminars and workshops

3,00%

Sports Base and inventory

3,00% 23,00%

Participate in competitions

16,00%

Warm communication with athletes and their parents Presents

6,50%

summer sport camps

6,50% 42,00%

Intresting trainings

0,00% 5,00% 10,00% 15,00% 20,00% 25,00% 30,00% 35,00% 40,00% 45,00%

Most of the respondents mentioned sport camps, games and training variety. One respondent noted that he invites other famous couches, spends leisure time with children by going to the cinema or having dinner. He also gives a reward for good attendance. Some of them pointed out that it is important to know youth psychology and kindly communicate not only with the youth, but also with their parents. Other coaches participate in seminars, courses; they once or twice a year take tests to determine athletes’ improvement. It should be emphasized that many of the methodologies can be considered as factors that raise motivation.

What factors influence the causes of children's early retirement from sport?

Slow improvement, bad results - 18% Interest in another sport, or useful activities - 22% Boring workout, qualification of trainer 11% Computer, Idleness, indifference -27% Lack of bases and inventory - 11% Influence of non sporting friends - 4% School and lot of homeworks -7%

The majority of respondents indicated, that children retire from sports because of computer and internet addiction, or because they couldn’t achieve results in a short period of time.

Part of the coaches told that children lose interest because of the same routine: the training becomes boring and children themselves start to laze. Other coaches affirmed that poor sporting basis or lack of money, friends’ influence, bad grades in school, parents’ indifference may also lead to child’s quitting with sports.

Have you been carrying any research with your athletes? Did it help your work with children? How? 80,00% 70,00% 60,00% 50,00%

Not doing any researches 67 %

40,00% 30,00%

Doing reserches: testings, surveys and other - 33 %

20,00% 10,00% 0,00%

By answering this question, respondents fell into two groups: those who perform research and those who don’t. Those who do it, claim that their research involves surveys of children and their parents, various athlete tests in order to determine their technical and psychological parameters. So, we see that to develop and to make their work more interesting for children, sport coaches have many untapped research and survey opportunities.

The coaches were then asked to say something about the youth’s achievements. The majority of coaches have athletes who have achieved a great success. They are winners of Country’s Youth Championships, Junior Championships, multiplex champions and winners of other tournaments including European ones. Some athletes are even World champions or members of the national teams. This shows that coaches in Klaipeda have a high level of proficiency; moreover, by developing it is possible to expect that majority of the athletes in the sport will continue showing even better results.

Gdynia Poland The good practice material from Gdynia in Poland contains four examples from different sports about how the sport clubs actions have a positive impact on keeping children and youth in sports. One example is from basketball, one is from table tennis and two is from soccer.

Basketball

The Gdynia Basketball Association, Gdyńskie Towarzystwo Koszykówki (GTK), is the current Polish Champion in the U16 and U18 categories, bronze medalist of Polish Championships in the U20 category and Start Gdynia -­‐ the Polish Basketball League newcomer have signed a training contract. The contract sets out the terms of cooperation and the principles on which Start can choose players from among GTK pupils who play in the II league on everyday basis.

As part of the training contract, debuts by other basketball players who trained on courts in Gdynia are possible. The ultimate goal is basketball training and education. From this point of view we cannot underestimate the opportunity to cooperate with the club playing in the highest league. Knowledge which the young basketball players gain from working together with a professional team and competing against the best teams raises morale, strengthens the team and shows all its players that becoming a great basketball player is at their fingertips. The contract gives the possibility to extend the number of players and maintain a high level of competition in the team. Moreover, it allows young athletes to improve in basketball.

Table Tennis This is some example of good practices from table tennis in Gdynia that have a positive impact on keeping children and youth in sports:

1. To create conditions and to allow continuation of training which aims at achieving higher and higher athletic performance. If the club does not have the conditions to further develop the player, they should find another club in which that person may have development prospects/adequate training, sparing and participation in a league. To give an example, there was a girl who played in Orlik to the age of 14 and she made it to the top 20 in Poland. However, her opportunities of development slowly began to decrease and there was nobody in the club she could train with on equal level. She was persuaded to move to Straszyn where she can train with equally skilled players. She plays successfully in Women’s II League and she won the regional junior competition in November 2012. She is still training.

2. To prepare varied and interesting training techniques, to successfully motivate to hard and systematic work: an important role of the coach. If a player sees the meaning of life in training, likes to train and it brings him/her satisfaction, it is more likely that they will continue training for longer than those who train only because their parents demand it.

3. To introduce a system of rewards for outstanding players (in terms of commitment, systematic training and progress), e.g. participation in competitions outside the players’ hometown, appointments to provincial teams and higher, scholarships and cash bonuses.

The trips to Klaipeda and Karlskrona within the PYDOS project may serve as an example of a reward for UKS Orlik players who, due to their commitment to table tennis, were honored participation in that interesting project and were able to meet their foreign peers, learn about their lifestyles, visit places of interest in Europe and have a good time.

Soccer The soccer in Gdynia focuses on three areas due to keep the youths in sport. Those areas are; to assess psychological predispositions of competitive sport, to conduct medical examinations of players and to consider how to manage development of highly motivated and talented players.

Assessment of psychological predispositions to competitive sports Tasks • Psychological testing for temperament • “Pyramid of goals” test • Individual examination of the players’ self-­‐assessment Effects • Diagnosis of the psychological construction of the player • Knowledge about the predispositions of players to sports in general, as well as about cooperation in the peer group • Information about the players’ predispositions to long-­‐term sports practice, their motivation and determination to succeed in professional sport in the future • Individual training process • Introduction of individual mental training of each player, adjusted to psychological predispositions • Progress in results of individual and team players

Medical examination of players Tasks • Complex medical examination in the Centre for Sports Medicine Effects • Knowledge about health predispositions • Knowledge about health dysfunctions which may lead to disqualification from sports in general • Activities aimed at rehabilitation or correction of faulty posture to stop drop-­‐outs from sports for health reasons • Cooperation with parents: gaining information about the child's health

Management of talented players Task • To manage to develop and support players with high ambitions and talent • This will be done by the following structure

Effects • Creating optimal conditions for the development of talented players by raising the level of difficulty • Increase in efficiency of improving individual sports skills • Increase in the level of motivation to achieve targets • Advancement in sports (e.g. receiving a call to the national team)

• • •

Better results by team Acquisition of skills higher than projected in the standardized process of sports education Strengthening the player’s weaknesses.

Soccer A soccer coach in Gdynia for a team of girls says: -­‐ In my opinion, in order to maintain a relatively stable progress in recruitment for particular age groups and then to keep the number of players on those teams at 25, the following points should be implemented:

Recruit new athletes • More attractive forms of recruitment, such as internal tournaments with prizes for all participants (e.g. rewards in the form of small gifts, diploma for participation, calendars, pennants, etc. -­‐ clubs’ gadgets). That form of gratification would make the children feel wanted and rewarded for their contribution and participation (they would feel as if taking part in real competition for the first time).

The clubs missions • Make training sessions more attractive by introducing new kinds of exercises.

• Diversify training session through inviting other coaches and players.

• Give frequent lectures on various topics such as; nutrition, athlete’s body, behavior, treatment of injuries etc.

• Train with other groups, mixed training with both girls and boys.

• Organize sports camps, every camp set in a new, attractive spot.

• Participate in national and international tournaments.

• Create opportunities to participate in similar projects as PYDOS. • Create the possibility of joint trips to matches of the national team.

• Organize meetings with invited guests, not only connected with sports.

• Organize exchanges between the partner clubs from abroad and establish such contacts.

• Allow the best players to join regional/provincial teams, so that they might be able to break into the national team later on.