Club Captains in Youth Sport Erasmus Project

Project Title

Club Captains in Youth Sport

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The Club Captains in Youth Sport Project began by identifying a lack of understanding of the role of captains in sport, in clubs and for young people. There was enormous potential to enhance young people’s development and their athletic progress by developing a captain’s role that has a clear job description plus being given skills to lead and communicate. It seemed clear, young people wanted guidance about being a captain, this was a gap in their sporting education and there were some questions to be answered:
What is the role of the captain?
Who makes a good captain?
Why do we need a captain?
Is there any training for captains?
Who chooses the captain?
Is it different in other sports?

The objective of the project was to create an all sport training programme for Club Captains. It was important that the programme reflected the young people’s views of the captain’s role and what they wanted from the role. The outcomes developed as part of the project are:
A Survey for coaches and athletes to assess the current captain’s position in a sport.
A Training manual for facilitators to deliver the club captains training
The Club Captains programme, a 1 day training course with specific resources to enable young people to take on the Club Captain role with confidence and understanding.
The Club Captains Guide given to each young person providing support and information after the training.
A Framework to enable each National Governing Body of Sport to deliver their own specific Club Captains training.

Our partner organisation, Sport NI, is the leading public body for sport development in Northern Ireland (NI) providing access to governing bodies within NI, knowledge of existing leadership programmes and an understanding of standards and legislation governing sport.
To develop the survey and the training programme we met with 30 sporting bodies and 8 non-sporting bodies to investigate existing leadership programmes and to understand the position of a captain/leadership role in and outside of sport.
We also developed a 3-hour workshop for young people in the aquatics to explore the unanswered questions about the role of a captain. We held nine workshops, with a total of 133 young people, designed to explore:
– the captain or leader most admired and discuss why
– their ideal captain identifying the skills and responsibilities they felt a captain should have
– appropriate leadership activities and
– the type of person and the skills needed for a facilitator of a club captains training programme. This was not directly specified in the project application however it was a natural extension to the questions asked.
The involvement of young people at this stage resulted in outcomes that were truly youth led; these were corroborated by the research into existing programmes and the views of the stakeholders we met. From this information we developed a Facilitator training programme and a Club Captains training programme.
We advertised for facilitators using the specifications determined by the exploratory workshops and following interview and presentations, appointed 8 facilitators. The 8 facilitators each attended a training day, where they took part in every element of the Club Captains training and were provided with background information to understand the rationale behind the programme. This information is contained in the Facilitators Manual.
The Club Captains training programme was piloted with 15 young people and 2 facilitators. Following the pilot, the programme was adjusted according to the feedback received from the participants. A further 7 workshops were held with 115 young people attending the training. In total 130 club captains received the Club Captains in Youth Sport training. The final training workshops were held throughout Ireland to offer the opportunity to a wide range of clubs.
Following the final Club Captains training we met with our partner organisation to assess and review the final programme to develop a framework for all sports. This was useful to bring an all sport perspective to the programme and guide the information that needed to be included in such a framework.
We are providing facilitator training for our project partner through the existing tutor workforce in Sport NI. This is being offered to Sport Ireland (the public body for sport in Ireland) and to the network of Local Sports Partnerships. All the resources are available online through https://elearning.swimireland.ie/
The Club Captains training has enhanced young people’s leadership skills, given them the confidence to recognise their strengths and state what they want from the role of Club Captain. The participants have been given a voice to identify other skill sets that are missing such as public speaking, conflict management, developing self-belief and confidence plus organisational and time management skills. The Club Captains project can be built on, in the future, to further develop our athlete’s entrepreneurial education.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65255 Eur

Project Coordinator

Irish Amateur Swimming Association T/A Swim Ireland & Country: IE

Project Partners

• THE SPORTS COUNCIL FOR NORTHERN IRELAND