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Olympics, talent spotting, new club members

  • 02-08-2012 8:22am
    #1
    pc11
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 982 ✭✭✭


    I''ve been wondering how many sports clubs are ready to take advantage of the Olympics? There is bound to a surge in interest in some sports, especially ones that are prominent on Irish or UK tv.

    Are clubs ready to be welcoming to these newcomers who might be aged 7 or 17 or 37? Do you make it easy, I mean really easy, for beginners to find you, come to a training session, join up, progress over the coming months and years? Are you truly welcoming to new members or do you see them as a bit of a burden? Be honest? What's on your website? Is it up to date? What do you mean you don't have a website? Or a Facebook page? Does it look like your club is friendly, active, welcoming, well organised?

    The reality is that I know some clubs who are awful at how they treat new members and some that are pretty good. Do you want a future for your club or not?

    Also, I'm thinking about talent spotting. There are 2 ways youngsters might get involved in sport. The usual way is someone has an interest and finds a club themselves. They may or may not be any good at that sport, but could be brilliant at another.

    The other way is that sports bodies take the initiative. Why not organise a series of open days in a local sports hall. Set up some generic test events like a sprint, a strength test, flexibility test, coordination test, measure their heights etc. Have coaches there from many sports. Give the kids feedback on what they might actually be good at and give them a clear route to try out more and get involved.

    I'm thinking of the story about the GB women's rowers where one of them responded to a newspaper article looking for 'athletic people over a certain height'. 4 years later she's an Olympic champion. The fact is people are drawn to popular sports, but there could be other sports they would never consider that they could be talented in.

    I've never heard of anything like this in Ireland. Has it happened?

    I realise I could post this in every sports' forum, I just happen to know most about athletics.


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