Developing the Child Behind the Athlete

Coaching the Child Behind the Athlete: A Developmental Approach to Youth Sport is a comprehensive guide for any coach from the volunteer T-ball coach to the high school coach in a highly competitive league.  The premise of this book is that all coaches have the opportunity to help athletes develop both as athletes and as young men and women. It focuses on those important issues in a child¿s development that can be nurtured through participation in youth sports.  It is not about the Xs and Os of specific sports but rather how youth sports can strengthen personal qualities such as sportsmanship and mental toughness permitting children to flourish throughout their future sport and non-sport life.


This is the principal text for the Rutgers Research Council’s S.A.F.E.T.Y Clinic, an organization that has trained more than 250,000 volunteer coaches.


Special Features 

Three features are interspersed throughout most of the chapters to encourage coaches to get involved and to think about how the concepts presented might best be integrated into their coaching.


1. “Your Turn” includes such straightforward exercises as multiple choice questionnaires to determine how much information is retained and understood about topics such as lightening safety and common sports injuries to an open-ended analysis of the implications of how children’s views of their ability determine their responsiveness to goal setting.


2. “Spotlight on Sport” highlights specific areas that have both obvious and non-obvious implications for effective coaching. These include how civil immunity legislation protects volunteer coaches to how to use a teaching model of skill progressions that fits both basic and complex skills.

3. “From Chalkboard to the Playing Field” attempts to apply principles based upon sound scientific evidence to specific applications in practical coaching situations.