Unqualified coaches pose risk for tennis players in NZ
Tennis NZ is looking at setting up a register of tennis coaches to provide improved safety and higher standards for players. David Long reports.
Tennis New Zealand is looking to resolve a coaching issue in the country by encouraging coaches to get qualified and is aiming to set up a registration programme.
Currently in New Zealand anyone who knows one end of a tennis racquet from the other can call themselves a tennis coach and charge for lessons.
There are two concerns around this. One is to do with safety as some may not go through the process of police checks, and the other is that they’ll be coaching badly.
Tennis NZ encourages coaches to take the courses it puts on, but it can’t stop someone calling themselves a tennis coach or clubs taking on coaches who don’t have any qualifications or police background checks.
‘‘One of the things around that is safety,’’ Tennis NZ CEO Julie Paterson said.
‘‘We’ve just undertaken a review of our participant protection policy and that is to ensure the policy is as best practice as it can be. From that and also our modernising tennis plan, one of the key priorities around that and our IT products we’re developing, was creating a safe tennis register.
‘‘This is going to be a register of everybody, coaches included, who has regular contact with children and vulnerable adults.
‘‘That will ensure everybody has a police vet and we’ll have a national register of that.
‘‘We’re consulting with coaches and other members of the community around that at the moment, to see what a coach registration process might be.
‘‘We haven’t concluded this yet, but the project is well under way.’’ If parents want their children to try tennis and have lessons, they’ll invariably take them along to the local club and sign them up for a squad as well as maybe private lessons.
Most parents wouldn’t know whether the club coach is qualified, what the qualifications mean, if the coach has a dubious past, or is any good.
‘‘Where some of the responsibility starts is with the clubs and ensuring they only contract coaches that are police vetted, that have qualifications and those qualifications are registered,’’ Paterson said.
‘‘It’s going to be quite a shift in thinking about the accountability. But I don’t want to preempt the outcome of this process. The guys are going through quite a bit of consultation to make sure we get this right and that it works for the community, but making sure the safety of the participants is at the forefront of that.
‘‘The second piece is around the quality of the coaches and understanding what qualifications everyone has and whether they’re keeping those qualifications up to date.
‘‘Ideally, someone would be able to go online and see at a club who the coaches are, what their qualifications are and that they’ve had a police check.
‘‘It’s a bit of a process, but it’s something that’s really important to us.’’
Andrew Falck, who coaches at Burwood Park Tennis Club, Sumner Tennis and Squash club and
St Margaret’s College in Christchurch, understands the importance of coaches getting qualified, but feels more could be done to make it meaningful.
‘‘My experience of it is that you can be a bad coach and still have a qualification,’’ said Falck, who won the award for New Zealand Performance Coach of the Year in 2019.
‘‘So I’m on the fence. I did a bit of coach development and I found that people could attend the course and get a qualification, regardless of skill level, because you’re always helping them
‘‘This is going to be a register of everybody, coaches included, who has regular contact with children and vulnerable adults. That will ensure everybody has a police vet and we’ll have a national register of that.’’ Julie Paterson Tennis NZ CEO
through.’’ Falck feels there could be an apprenticeship set up for aspiring coaches, similar to what there is for other skilled occupations.
But he also feels that clubs are more concerned about getting as many members as possible, than they are about making those members better players.
‘‘What do clubs really want? They want numbers,’’ Falck said.
‘‘You can go to any committee meeting and the first thing they’ll say is that we’ve got 500 members and we’re breaking even.
‘‘Or they’ll say how can we get more members? None of them are saying how can we make our players better?
‘‘For me, I judge my coaching on performance, so I’d rather have 10 kids playing tournaments and getting into New Zealand squads, than having 200 kids coming and going on a seasonal basis.
‘‘But if you’re a coach and you’re running a business, the money’s not in performance, it’s in participation,’’ he added.
‘‘People do gravitate to good coaches over time, but I also think that the damage can be done before that.
‘‘That first time experience at a club for any tennis player is really important. If they get a crappy one, they walk away, or stay for a year and never return back to the game.
‘‘It’s only the real stayers who’ll look for a more successful coach, a coach who has got better players and they can see they’re creating better players.’’
Henry Isaacs, the son of former world No 17 Belinda Cordwell, completed the Junior Development Course and found it a useful experience.
‘‘I’d done a lot of coaching beforehand and I really needed a piece of paper to back me up and the JDC was the natural thing,’’ Isaacs said.
‘‘There are a lot of benefits for it, it’s a qualification recognised by the ITF so I can use it anywhere around the world.
‘‘I really lacked a piece of paper. I had done a lot of coaching with mum and learnt a lot, but I didn’t have that confirmation I was doing the right thing.
‘‘It was a good opportunity to develop all of my coaching skills and especially the technical aspects, because that’s something I hadn’t done a lot of.’’
Isaacs is currently coaching with the Planitpro organisation which runs programmes through the Wellington region.
However, while Isaacs learned a lot from the course, he doesn’t think it has helped him advance his coaching career ahead of unqualified coaches.
‘‘Although I found the JDC useful, I’m not using it at all in my coaching now,’’ he said.
‘‘I could have got the work I’ve got now through Clint (Packer, Planitpro owner). The JDC helps, but he’s got a lot of coaches all on the same programme as me who don’t have their JDC.
‘‘They’ve done their coaching assistant courses, but you don’t need the JDC to get work.
‘‘It’s great that I’ve got the JDC, but I could have done the same stuff without it.
‘‘There’s a lot more learning that goes on around coaching besides the JDC. The JDC doesn’t really teach you how to manage a bunch of five-year-olds on a hot Wednesday afternoon after school, or managing parents, which can be difficult at times.’’
Gayle Vaughan, Tennis NZ coach development manager says almost 100 coaches have gone through their JDC programme.
‘‘Ninety nine coaches have reached the JDC in New Zealand,’’ Vaughan said of the programme which began in 2015.
‘‘Each coach has 12 months to complete the course and we tend to deliver the course in four blocks of four days, so generally their contact time is across a four to six-month period.’’
Like Paterson, Vaughan feels a key factor moving forward is a coaching register.