What Am I Going to Do Next Year -- Principles of Long Term Athletic Development

Although we are very busy these next couple of weeks focusing on the end of the year, I am trying to set aside time to think of next year, the year after that and years after that.

I do this every year, to answer a question I get every spring typically from a parent. Some seem to worry about what are we going to do next year when we lose our most recent star athlete. This is a rightfully scary question at a small school and provides one of the most interesting challenges we face. We do not have 4000 kids in our high school from whom we know the genetic lottery is going to rise somebody to the top. But we have always figured this out. And more and more I believe it is by focusing on principles of long term athletic development.

Our future top high school athletes are in our Lower School right now. How can we help them grow and ultimately allow them to flourish? What are their needs? How do we make our program more progressive and coherent?

In thinking about that, I was reviewing some notes yesterday from Vern Gambetta's presentation at GAIN last June on Long Term Athletic Development Principles. I thought I would share them. There are 10 principles. I am missing #9. What would you put in for #9?

1) Fit the program to the athlete ... not the athlete to the program
2) Focus on what they can control and not be victimized by things they can't
3) Teach them to find a way or make one.
4) Don't make training progression decisions based upon chronological age
5) Don't become preoccupied with seeking winners at all ages
6) Spend 100 times more time and resources on talent development than on talent identification, rankings and outcome based strategies
7) Provide a balanced program all the time
8) Expose them to a variety in methodology
9)
10) Anchor yourself and the athlete in Humility ... but never compromise.

UPDATE -- here was a great suggestion for #9 from Randy Ballard ATC at the University of Illinois.
Focus on global development: sleep habits, lifestyle, diet and resilience are as important as or more important than practice.