Youth Training
@ St James Fury CC
The challenge of providing high-quality youth cricket coaching at club level is finding a balance between skills practice and match practice. Whilst skills practices (often in nets and/or performed as isolated drills) provide a lot of repetition for each individual child, they often lack the context and pressure of an actual game. In contrast to this, match-play practices provide the full learning environment of a game, but limit the amount of time each individual has to practise their skills.
At St James CC we are very lucky to have incredible facilities for youth training. Four full size nets (as well as two net cages) sit alongside a second pitch that acts as a training ground during the weeks over the cricket season. These facilities combined with a number of highly-qualified coaches, mean we can provide a fully-rounded cricket education for every child and teenage member of the club. Find below a brief outline of how we do this for our colts at each developmental stage….
Softball Training 7-10 Year Olds:
We want to inspire a lifelong love of cricket in every one of our junior members, and this is where it starts. Children are kept active for the entire duration of our softball sessions and we provide multiple coaches to keep group sizes small, ensuring each child gets the maximum amount of game-play and attention. Each week, training will usually be themed and small-sided pairs or team games, adapted to each weeks theme, will form the basis of the session. In addition to this, there will usually be a coach running a ‘breakout’ side session, again based on the theme (‘straight hitting’ / ‘catching’ etc), where children are given more individual attention and can work through more repetitions of the basic skills of the game.
Even at this early stage, each child is coached as an individual. We don’t use a cookie-cutter approach to teaching technique that every child must adhere to. We work with each young cricketer’s natural movement patterns to help them become the best players they can be. Children have more fun learning when they aren’t given all the answers, so we encourage them to experiment, to problem-solve within games and to learn to think tactically.
Hardball Training 10-12 Year Olds:
Every care is taken to ensure each child’s transition into playing hardball is as smooth as possible. Towards the end of their softball training years, we will provide introductory hardball sessions. We also enter teams into the Indoor Cricket League (played in full padding with a harder ball), which also acts as a good transition between the two forms of the game.
We still stick to the philosophies and methodologies of coaching we establish in the previous phase of development, but often for our u11 and u12 team training, the focus of each session is guided by feedback from team managers or players after areas in need of improvement have been identified.
At 11 years of age, no child is a specialist, and as such is still encouraged and helped to learn and experiment with all areas of the game. This philosophy is carried into matches, where batting orders are frequently changed, everyone is encouraged to bowl and the team captain changes each game.
Hardball Training 13+ Year Olds:
Our more experienced juniors, though still encouraged to be as multi-skilled and adaptable as possible as cricketers, will naturally start to specialise as they identify the areas of the game they enjoy the most. It’s at this level that we will start to coach individuals to perform certain specific roles within their team.
We have specialists on the coaching team that will work with players on an individual basis at this stage and as players reach 14/15 years of age they will be encouraged and prepared to play for the club’s senior sides that we have throughout the levels of the Sussex League pyramid.
Winter Training
Softball 7-11 Year Olds:
Our younger juniors have the opportunity to keep playing cricket across Autumn and Winter at the local Downlands Sports Centre in Hassocks. A 20-week program in total that not only continues the development in their general cricket skills but also prepares them to play in the Indoor Cricket League. We believe that the indoor version of the game, with its focus on straight-hitting, quick running and tactical thinking, is of great benefit to young cricketers. Again, training is largely games-based, action-packed and a huge amount of fun!
Hardball 11+ Year Olds:
From early January through to the end of March we are lucky enough to be one of the few clubs who run winter nets at the Aldridge Cricket Academy near Falmer - one of very few bespoke indoor cricket facilities in the county. This 12-week program is open to all our hardball players. We provide 3 fully qualified coaches for each session to prepare our colts for the coming summer season.
