Successful Kiddy Cricket Coaching Workshops Regionally
KINGSTON Jamaica, November 11th 2011 – Over 420 physical education teachers from primary schools in the Scotiabank Kiddy Cricket programme across the Caribbean have just completed coaching workshops organized by the West Indies Cricket Board and Scotiabank, in conjunction with the Ministries of Education and National Sports Councils in each island. The organizers staged twenty six (26) workshops over a four week period in seven islands under the theme Planning and Facilitating in a Practical Environment. The participating islands were Jamaica, Trinidad, Antigua, St. Vincent Montserrat, St Lucia and Dominica. The workshops focused on improving the coaching capacity of PE Teachers to deliver foundation cricket training to primary school children playing Kiddy Cricket.
The Scotiabank Kiddy Cricket Programme teaches children the fundamental skills of the game, such as batting, bowling, fielding and catching skills, with additional focus on general cricketing history and rules of playing cricket.
Explaining the rationale behind the new coaching programme, KJ Singh, Kiddy Cricket Officer of the WICB said, “Even though the Scotiabank Kiddy Cricket Programme has been successfully sustained for over a decade as one of the WICB’s major development programmes, it is still important for us to engage and equip PE teachers with the knowledge on how to deliver cricket training at this foundation level.”
The workshops used an interactive approach in delivering the coaching techniques by including classroom interaction as well as on the field demonstrations. “We ensured that the teachers fully understood the objectives of the Kiddy Cricket Programme, how it was intended to be delivered to the students and the theory behind the coaching techniques,” explained Mr. Singh, “We followed this up by allowing them to demonstrate what they learnt and to conduct “mock” classroom sessions. These demonstrations allowed us to see how well they were absorbing the information and could assimilate what they would be doing with the children when they got back to their schools.”
He added, “it is important for the programme’s scope and reach to expand from year to year; exposing more West Indian children to the game of cricket. Thus, it is critical in this strategy that our PE teachers are equipped in their “coaching roles”. The workshops also engaged PE Teaches in discussion on the concepts of retention and positive reinforcement, encouraging our children to develop a love for the sport when they return to play the game of cricket on a daily basis.
Teachers who have participated in the session have issued praises for the organizers of the workshop expressing that they found their time well spent and the experience very rewarding. The hands-on training that the technical team provided made the course come alive and improved their ability to go to their schools and teach the programme to children.
In the coming weeks, other islands including Barbados, St Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Grenada and Guyana will be hosting their coaching workshops.
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