Sport: Championship skill of athelets

Project

The value of sport as a trigger for personal development has been recognized in the high ranks of the international sport world. In 1994, Danish and colleagues defined life skills as “skills that enable individuals to succeed in the different environments in which they live, such as school, home and in their neighborhoods”. An implicit assumption in this definition is that life skills help a person not only excel in his or her sport, but also benefit the individual once he or she transfers the skills to non-sport settings.

As a project partner within the Erasmus+ Program, Society Support Alliance has taken the initiative of promoting education in and through sport with special focus on skills development. Before we talk about how to facilitate positive sports environments though, we need to address the issue of why we should do this in the first place. Should coaches even play a role in facilitating positive youth development? Should they build character in their young athletes as well as technical skills? After all, coaches are primarily (and in some cases solely) trained to impart knowledge that leads to game competence (e.g. learning new technical and tactical skills, game awareness and fitness), not psychological and social skills.

Development of life skills is a complex process and with this project we want to provide insight on how this process may occur with young high-level athletes. It is also important to outline current understanding of how sport can achieve positive youth development (i.e., life skills), the role of the environment and those involved at the ‘microsystem’ level of sport.

Activites

Kick off meeting
Educational meeting: "Personal skills for wellbeing"
Educational meeting: "Interpersonal skills"
Creative meeting
Local dissemination activities
Final evaluation meeting

Kick off meeting

Setting up project objectives through oral and audio visual presentations, discussions, analyses and debriefings
Determining project scope
Choosing project approach
Establishing project timeline
Identifying project team roles and responsibilities
Constituting project management

Educational meeting: "Personal skills for wellbeing"

Developing self-awareness, self-worth and respect for others
Meeting challenges, managing change and building relationships
Experiencing personal achievement, building resilience and confidence
Understanding and developing physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing and social skills
Reflecting strengths and skills for making better choices when planning next steps

TC Personal development

Empowering participants to positively interact and work with others effectively
Acquiring knowledge about leadership
Expanding communication skills
Establishing problem-solving abilities
Developing team work and team building

Creative meeting

Presentation of the results from activities M2 and M3
Agreements on contents and design of the Toolkit
Forming a creative team and finalization of the Toolkit
Final agreements on formal establishment of the e-platform for online learning
Planning further Local dissemination activities

Local dissemination activities

Organizing a local sports day to raise awareness of the wellbeing of young people
Presenting the project to the public and welcoming other EU participants from partner cities
Organizing a meeting between sports organisations to foster mutual respect and help
Building cooperative relationships with the help of local authorities

Final evaluation meeting

Evaluation of methods and technicalities
Evaluation of coordination, cooperation and communication among partners
Evaluation of achieved results, outcomes and outputs
Follow up, impact and dissemination

Objectives

Developing skills to reflect critically and manage one’s lifestyle
Encouraging young people to have an attitude of aspiration and the desire to set and achieve goals
Creating and providing strategies which will enhance a person’s ability effectively and create behaviors that can influence and motivate others
Building confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, self-belief and self-respect in young players
To create an E-platform for skills development of young athletes

Results

Covering two main pillars for skill development of youth athletes
Developing personal skills for wellbeing as they represent the most fundamental of all skills for self-preservation
Setting up interpersonal skills of individuals to work well in a team or group, as well as with other people

One place for all documents

Download

Results of the project "Championship skills of athletes" are in the form of Toolkit, aiming to develop personal and interpersonal skills of athletes.

Go to downloads