It was a cold winter's Saturday morning and eight coach wannabes' turn up at St John’s School for the start of the Level 1 coaching course. We were joined by a group of college students, aged about eighteen, all keen, fit and raring to go. Nick Griffiths from Kidderminster Harriers Community Programme was our tutor for the day and started by giving us a thick folder, DVD and CD containing all the info we needed to complete the course.

After a brief chat about the course we put on our footy boots and off out to the playing fields we went.

The morning consisted of  mainly training scenarios which to start with we all volunteered quite willingly for but as the day went on the more mature of us started to take a backwards step as to let the younger students gain more experience.

After lunch there was a small amount of classroom work which was to set out a training programme. We then went back out and took it in turns to deliver our training programmes again using the students as the guinea pigs.

After a gentle nine hours we were finished (and I mean finished) and went off home for a lie down and then we had to watch the DVDs and do our homework.

A couple of days later, we were up at Aggborough Stadium for the next part of the training,  which consisted of guidance on how to  run a kids team, the development of the children as players, people, team members and lessons on how to look after them  physically.

We had another two visits to Aggborough for coaching on first aid and child protection both lasting a good three hours and giving us excellent information for use within football and outside of the  football world.

The next session was the big one, the assessment, so back up to St John’s School we went. This time there was only ten of us and we all had to take our own training session.

The one main thing was safety of the children, including preparation of equipment and the area to be used. For the running of the session you needed to show clear instructions on what and why they were doing the session and if required give a good demonstration, you had to encourage and be enthusiastic but most of all you had to make it fun and enjoyable.

After we had all done our bit, we found we had all passed and if we could have, I’m sure we would have all jumped around with excitement.

Looking back at the course,  it was quite in-depth (maybe a little too much for parents just wanting to help run a team) but it was full of very useful info and good ideas.

After finishing it, I do feel confident I would have a good idea on how to run a team to a standard which hopefully would be good enough for children and me.

The people on the course were:  Donna Morgan, Karl Rose,  Mike Cross, Mitch Bastable, Dave Gwinnell, Mark Burford, Darren Powell and Dave Bird.

Photos taken by Ian Adams