The Next Level

Question
I am co-captain for my High School rugby team in Ohio and I have
been playing for 4 years now and I want my team to work harder at
practice so that we can actually advance to faster pace and more
aggressive rugby. Right now I organize touch rugby on mondays
and wednesdays but only 6-8 players come out. What can I do to
motivate them?  

Answer
Tony

Motivation is a very hard concept to define, much less apply.

Even after many years of coaching and playing, I still have problems with motivation of the team.

I have found that as coach I do little more to motivate the player then to provide the environment.  Motivation is often self-applied.

In order to establish motivation, establish the environment.  Since intrinsic motivation (motivation that is focused on self-improvement) is the goal, it is necessary for you to establish a task oriented environment that emphasizes mastery of the skills of rugby, minimization of mistakes, developing communication, and providing consistent feedback to the player.

This environment will stress the mechanics and decision-making processes of the game (how to win) instead of a primary emphasis on winning.  As mentioned, motivation is often self applied, it is best to focus on areas that a player can control such mastery in a particular skill and development of a specific mental pattern for play.  When the focus is purely on winning, or some other factor generally out of the control of the player, the desire to continue in the face of the inability to succeed is significantly decreased.

Winning is important and an important tool for motivation, but is neither the most important nor the most effective.

So what does all this goobly gook mean to a high school player who is trying to get more players out for fun practice?

-make the focus of practice skill development.  Often informal sessions like those that you describe become simply touch rugby sessions that promote bad habits and only involve a small portion of the participants.

-develop some attainable skill development goals for each practice (quick hands back and forth ten times without dropping the ball, ball pick up and put down drills ten times without committing a knock on.

-since I assuming that you are doing this on your own without a trained coach on hand, you should not be doing contact.

-when you play touch rugby, have an experienced player be the 搑eferee?to ensure the flow of the game.  In addition to the normal penalties, penalize a team for poor play.  Use touch rugby as a training tool to promote decision-making skills.

-as you get more confident in the ability of your players and their confidence and skill levels increase, set higher goals for each practice.  Competetive players strive to achieve.  Giving them progressively higher goals promotes that

-then at practice, stress minimizing mistakes to create the climate for excellence.

Good luck

Deane Shephard
Stuttgart RC