A few words as we have now finished our classes for the year. We will be closed until 11 January 2025.
We want to thank you all for sending your children to Shaws Little League this year – either our weekly sessions, our camps or our birthday parties. As always, it is a real pleasure seeing your children improve and enjoy playing sport. We hope that you have seen the improvements in your children too – not just in their sports skills, but their overall well-being – their willingness to try new things, the way that they communicate, the way that they make decisions, “boss” situations and many other things.
Our programme and activities are geared towards maximum active participation. This gives all of the children lots of opportunity to improve their sports skills and confidence. More hitting, throwing, kicking, bouncing, moving etc is going to make the children improve – they don’t need technical, sophisticated and elongated instructions to get better.
Our coaches do not just coach sport – less than 1% of people who take up sport, will go on to play sport professionally. So at this age, there is no point in focusing solely on sports skills. What we do in addition to sports skills is address character, behaviour and attitude – these things are all transferable regardless of what your child goes on to do in the future. Think through the “listen, try hard, play nicely, have fun” – we can’t think of anything more simple to help the children understand about character, behaviour and attitude.
So even if your child does not enjoy every aspect of sport or does not run as fast or hit the ball as hard as other children, Shaws Little League will always be a beneficial experience for your child.
Multisport
As you know, we conduct multisport and sport-specific classes for your children. It’s easy to think that when it comes to multisport programmes, it can be seen as a bit of a jack of all trades type programme that doesn’t achieve anything. Changing the sports each week helps your child keep playing, enjoying and learning for longer. Across all of the sports, the basics of being ready, moving, watching the ball, having a stable base, body rotation and striking the ball are the same. So at a young age, it’s better to work on these macro movements that are going to benefit your child in their sporting future plus they get the benefit of brain development through doing these movements.
As an aside to the notion of multisport for children – my family members have represented New Zealand in Cricket, Football and Hockey. My grandfather was the first person of Indian ethnicity to play test cricket for New Zealand, my cousin played Football for New Zealand alongside Ryan Nelson (198 BPL matches) and my brother and I played Hockey for New Zealand.
So it’s fair to say that we take playing a range of different sports and learning a range of different sports skills quite seriously.
Is my child good or successful?
Shaws Little League is always about being more than sport. One of the biggest things that always comes up when discussing children’s sport is whether a child is good or successful at sport.
Prior to the Paris Olympics this year, we messaged about how many children who have been enrolled in our programme had gone on to represent their countries across a range of sports. There are other children who are playing provincial grade too. Maybe that is successful. However for us as coaches, success is not just defined at that level. There are so many ways to measure/judge success in sport – the shy child who makes eye contact or develops the confidence to speak in front of other children; the child that listens, tries and improves and laughs about it afterwards; the child that struggled with losing but then wins sportsmanship awards at primary school; the child that helps another child get better; the child that carries their water bottle and puts it in the water crate for the first time; the child that learns to self-regulate; a child that responds – either negatively or positively – at least we know that they are thinking; the child that keeps wanting to improve. Basically, there are lots of successful moments in sport beyond jerseys, trophies and medals.
As coaches, we try to facilitate all of this. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t – coaching is like playing – sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but if you stop trying, you will definitely lose. One of our favourite quotes is from Vince Lombardi, a renowned American Football coach who said that “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” This is how our coaches go about working with your children – trying to move them along towards perfection without pressure and making it fun. Serious Fun. All the time.
The Long Game
Essentially, Shaws Little League is all about playing the long game. We do this because we want all of the children to have a positive sports experience and want to continue playing sport and benefitting from sport – right up until they become adults. Many organisations focus on the short-term – you know, trying to develop the best 8 year old child. There is no correlation between the best 8 year old child and them winning medals or succeeding in life. The ones that do succeed are likely to be the children that enjoy playing, training and improving, regardless of what level that they are at.
I loved playing sport for New Zealand and I am sure that your children would love to represent their country and/or be recognised for their hard work and effort in whatever they choose to do.
People always ask me who I would want in my team to play a test match or a gold medal match – I was lucky enough to play alongside my brother which was cool. So he would be one of my teammates. For the others, instead of rattling off household names, or those people who ask me that question – I can honestly say that I would want to play or be involved in those matches with your children on the team. And if it happened, I know we will win.
Christmas Wishes
Lastly, we want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and we look forward to seeing you all again in 2025.
Thanks so much for your support, comments, feedback, banter, holiday tips, the participation when asked to do, the referrals and most importantly just being there helping, supporting and encouraging your child.
Enjoy the festive season, the catch-ups, the celebrations and see you all soon.
Best regards