The Coach
Name – Connor Ratcliffe
Age – 21
Education – The Queens School/Thomas Clarkson Community College (2003-2008)
The College of West Anglia (2008-2010)
The University of Lincoln (2010-present)
Coaching Experience
I have been interested in teaching and coaching for about 6 years now and my aim was to gain experience and develop my coaching ability, I have taken a vairty of different courses to help establish an understanding of different sports. In 2007 I took charge of Outwell Swifts under 11’s football team as my first real experience of taking charge of a session, I was in charge of the team for 1 season which was a real eye opener as to what it would be like to work with children of that age.
After the breif experience with Outwell Swifts I took charge of Wisbech st Mary under 10’s yet another local football team, this was run alongside a more established coach at the club who helped me a great deal in learning how to coach that age and also how to deal with parents of the players in a respectful way. Alongside the work I was doing in my own time I was also developing skills through my college work and being coached myself, attending a very sporting focused college gave me the oppertunity to learn from some fantastic coaches as well as coach young people different sports.
During my first year at university my coaching experiences moved from young children to my peers and people of my own age, this was helpful because it was an opportunity to test my coaching ability and adapting to coach people who are already established in certain sports. Moving into my second year I took part in a placement at Lincoln Minster School this lasted for 6 weeks but through the relationship i managed to create with the teachers already there i was able to continue and set up my current placement as well as voulenteering once a week taking a variety of different sports.
Sporting Experience
My sporting experience varies from taking part in a wide range of different sports at recreational level as well as taking my football very seriously and being lucky enough to play at a relatively high standard representing Nowrich City and Peterborough United at youth level. throughout school i was very interested in sport and played for as many teams as my time and ability would let me, the sports that fell into this bracket were things such as rugby, badminton and athletics.
As well as school sports I also played in my spare time weather it be for the local Badminton team or just with friends attempting to play games like American Football and Tennis.
Coaching Philosophy
Through the use of teaching games for understanding my aim is to develop the skills and attributes of indivuduals through game based scenarios.
The Teaching Games for Understanding approach to the teaching of sport/physical activity is a holistic model because it focuses attention on the individual and not with the sub set of activity specific skills for the activity in focus. (Pill, 2008).
(Taken from Thorpe, R. et al’s “Rethinking Games Teaching”. 2000)
