InterAktive Issue 4 2017

Coaching & Talent
Development
Pathway to Podium (P2P)
For the Thorpe family, dinner time is important parenting time – a time when
parents Julie and John can focus on supporting and developing their children
as balanced people, not just developing triathletes.
Coach Evolve
A cohort of 50 development coaches from 22 different sports have been
selected to take part in Coach Evolve 2017.
The first workshop was led by Dr Ralph Pim in March
and focused on the effectiveness of embracing a values
based approach to coaching. Follow-up regional forums
were facilitated by each of our RST partners in April to
further embed learning from the first workshop.
Kiwi adventurer and round the world cyclist Jeremy Scott
was the guest speaker at the second Coach Evolve
workshop. 36 development coaches were in attendance
to hear Jeremy talk about how heart surgery as a child
became his reason to ride around the world raising
money for the Heart Foundation. His story was one of
human endeavour, tenacity and self-discovery.
In a highly interactive session coaches were able to
relate their context of being on a coaching journey to his
insights and experiences. His powerful story was emotive
and his messages inspirational.
Throughout the talk the facilitation of the RST coach
leads meant participants could collectively mobilise
knowledge and join the dots in a meaningful way.
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The impact of his talk was tangible with many coaches
resonating with the planning, reflective learning and
resilience required to complete the journey, things they
can apply in their day to day coaching.
“I thought the experiences that
Jeremy shared were valuable not
only in a personal sense but for
self-reflection in a coaching
capacity. I liked the breaks to
discuss relevant points in an open
forum and how to apply them
to coaching. I left feeling very
inspired.”
- Coach Evolve programme participant
The Spanish have a word for it: sobremesa.
It translates as ‘over the table’, but what it really means
is ‘conversations at mealtime’. Researchers have
confirmed what Julie Thorpe knows instinctively:
dinner time is important parenting time…
“We’re a family who eat together,” Julie says. “It’s
important. It provides the opportunity to talk about
what’s going on for the children: how they are doing
and what they might need.” Julie and John Thorpe’s
children are the triathletes Ainsley and Trent and their
older brother, Marcel.
Sport was a big part of Thorpe family life from early on.
Marcel was into athletics and so they all went along.
Ainsley is no doubt embarrassed that her mother is
still telling people how she won her first race, at age two,
in nappies. At school, the children were into any sport
that was on offer: softball, cricket, netball, rugby, touch.
When Trent was 10 years, at a swim meet, Julie and
John were told he achieved the qualifying time for
the nationals.
“It became obvious early that they were good,” says Julie,
“We’ve always encouraged them to do their best and be
competitive in whatever they are doing, but it’s always up
to them what they do and how far they want to go.
Our role is to provide support and, if necessary, we help
them reassess. When Ainsley broke her shoulder last
year, I said to her, ‘if you don’t want
to do this anymore, that’s
absolutely fine with us.
It’s your decision.’”
Julie adds: “When
they became part
of the Sport NZ Pathway to Podium programme that
helped us a lot. It meant we could step back from
supporting their development as athletes and leave that
to Bruce, Jan and Jana* who have the expertise in the
different disciplines and who take responsibility for their
strength and conditioning. Our role became providing
everything else they need: financial support, emotional
support, help with planning and organisation and—
above all, perhaps—providing a stable base. With their
development as athletes taken care of, our focus as
parents is their development as people.”
“When the children are home, and we sit down together
as a family for a meal,” says Julie, “It’s about much more
than topping up their food intake. That’s when we can
talk about how they are coping, what help they need
and how to prioritise. Something we’ve discussed has
been their life after triathlon as a result, Ainsley and Trent
are both studying at AUT. As well as apart from having
something to go on to later, they need something other
than tri to think about now.”
It’s not unusual in New Zealand for sport to be part of
the sobremesa: the conversation over the dinner table.
In a select few households, however, sport becomes
a much more important conversation. When children
become high performance athletes, their parents are
required to become high performance parents.
In those families, as the Italians would say, “la vita
è una combinazione di magia e pasta”: life is a
combination of magic…and pasta.
Bruce, Jan and Jana are Trent and Ainsley’s coaches
as part of the P2P programme. This case study was
originally prepared by Sport NZ
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