14 Sep 2016

In an attempt to intensify athletes talent identification at a tender age and sharpen skills of coaches, International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) has hosted Level One youth coaches refresher seminar in Kenya.

Botswana’s Chilume Ntshwarang who is attending the seminar said in an interview that  the seminar was a  new level one under 16 lectures refresher seminar that is aiming at maximising the development of lecturers who can teach and develop coaches who in turn will coach under 16 athletes.

He said the seminar aims at bringing updated information on books issued before and updated technical information like training the energy systems.

Furthermore, he said IAAF wants to improve the technical competence of coaches, the ability to notice errors when athletes perform the skills and give relevant feedback to rectify the mistakes.

The seminar, he said also aims at equipping coaches with skills to improve on nurturing of talent at grassroots level and maximising the technical capacity of performing various movements of an athlete.

“Some of the areas touched during the seminar is that we should make sure that an athlete  should be able to perform the run, throw and  jump movements before eventually being  placed in a particular group events like sprints and hurdles group which also help them pick their individual event,” he said

Botswana Athletics Association secretary general, Legojane Kebaitse said his association was happy that Ntshwarang attended the refresher seminar as that alone would benefit his association in talent identification at a tender age.

“Remember Ntshwarang is a teacher at a junior school and this puts him in a good position to identify athletes guided by what he was taught in these courses and seminars,” he said.

Kebaitse said the course was important given that its main objective is to develop the skills to organise children’s athletics, preparation and competition and it is orientation to athletics for 13-15 year-olds

He said the last time such a course was held was in 2012-13 where  Kago Tladinyana attended, adding that refresher seminars were also important as they help resuscitate what the coaches were taught. ENDS