scott.projectsomewhere

With the 18 season still a month away, and no Moth to play with, I’ve been roped into doing some 29er coaching lately.

The last weekend I spent with the new fleet in Melbourne. Port Phillip put on a good show, with warm weather and a good range of conditions to train in. 12 fairly new teams showed up, making up what is easily the most organised youth training fleet in the country. Despite being fairly young, and very new to the 29er, the guys and girls showed some good skills and were keen to improve. It’s definitely more rewarding to work with enthusiastic people wanting to learn. It’ll be good to see how the new Victorians fare against the more experienced NSW, WA and QLD guys that are getting the same coaching treatment from either myself or Nathan over the next few months.

One of the most interesting aspects of the weekend was the new coaching toys they were trialling. 5 or 6 radio headsets from the Australian company HeadZone were distributed through the fleet so that I could literally get inside the kids heads as they sailed around the track, no matter where I was on the course, or how loud the wind, waves or engine was. I’d have to say these kits are the most effective sailing coaching tools I’ve ever used. Now that I’ve used them - I can’t go back. I think if you’re paying for a coach without having this instant feedback, you’re just pissing money up the wall.

I’m going to get myself one to use.

It was pretty funny to talk to one of the boats, but have another couple hearing the same advice, and it was often pretty dangerous given that I’d often be holding down the talk button when blowing up at something or other with some more colourful skiff euphamisms.

The parents on shore or on the water were also tuned into the same frequency, and did hear me get a bit animated at times… lucky they didn’t hear all of it.

The new gear ended up making it a bit difficult to work with the teams that weren’t wearing them. I felt as though I couldn’t get through to those teams very well, and they probably ended up feeling a bit neglected. But that’s life.

Anyway, there’s another day of coaching with the NSW fleet (or part of it) at Illawarra this Saturday. Hopefully I can get hold of at least one of the head sets before then.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 10:09 am and is filed under 29er, Sailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.