Coaching Male and Female Footballers - Essay Example

 Male coaches' perceptions of the differences between coaching male and female footballers Introduction Gender sometimes acts as a go-between factor for an effective relationship between coaches and athletes. Anderson and Dixon1 describe that over the past three decades, there is an increase in female participation in sports and athlete, however, the number of female coaches has decreased. The relationship between a coach and a footballer has a profound effect on performance, satisfaction and quality of life. Various factors influence this relationship. These include conflict between the coach and the player, incorrect technical information, lack of focus on the team and coach’s failure to handle controversies. Coaches’ effectiveness shifts from their personality to the study of psychology, leadership style and their behaviors in the field. This shift shows that coaches’ actions and words influence footballers’ performances and the psychological welfare. This study assesses male coaches’ perceptions of the difference between coaching male and female footballers. According to Davis & Jowett2 to learn the coaching behaviors desirable for all, it is necessary to identify specific behaviors about coaches. Various behaviors relate to positive psychosocial outcomes towards the players. These include positive support, encouragement and technical information. They include essential factors that facilitate a player’s relationship with the coach, success, preference of challenging activities and influence in effort and interest. To understand the male coaches’ perceptions of the difference in gender, it is necessary to understand their psychological status. According to the principles of grouping that shows various principles in psychology, humans naturally perceive objects as structured patterns. This is true because the human mind has a natural form. This helps in perceiving patterns of the stimulus according to given rules. The principles of grouping according to Gestalt include proximity, similarity, closure, good continuation, common fate and good form. According to Ens3, the principle of proximity according to groupings shows that human perceptions group stimuli that tend to be close together as a same object. They also group stimuli that are far apart as separate objects. The proximity principle allows grouping of larger elements and this applies where people tend to see clusters of dots instead of individual dots. In this, coaches tend to view their teams as one and perceive it as one person instead of seeing person. The second principle is the similarity that shows when all other factors are equal, perceptions enable one to see stimuli that resemble each other physically as part of the same item and are unlike and part of another item. This enables people to differentiate objects basing on their visual texture and likeness. The brain, therefore, uses similarity to differentiate objects. This applies where male coaches view all their team members as one large team though each player may have a unique style that differentiates him or her from the other members4. The third principle of grouping is closure that shows the mind affinity to see complete figures even when the figure is incomplete or even when one part needed to complete the figure is missing. This shows how one perceives and recognizes patterns that are familiar to mind, for example, a male coach may perceive all the team members to be the same even when some have certain incapability. The other principle is the good continuation that shows a connection between two items, though, in this case, people tend to perceive each item as single. This gives the differences in stimuli even when there is visual overlap. People tend to group lines that follow the same direction over those that change directions5. According to Frey6, male coaches perceive male footballers to be following the same direction, group them, and organize them better over female footballers that may have abrupt changes in their performances. There principle of common fate is also necessary in psychology as it shows that when visual elements are moving in the same direction, people perceive the movement as the same stimuli, for example, footballers may be perceives as the same as long as they are moving in the same direction and same performance even when they are from different gender. Finally, the principle of good form shows the tendency of grouping forms of the same shape, color and pattern even when two forms overlap each other, for example, a pile of presents with various packages of different shapes and sizes wrapped in three patterns of wrapping papers. In this case, male coaches perceive male footballers as stimuli that are close together as compared to female footballers. Male coaches perceive that male footballers feel that they must first perform well for them to be socially accepted by both teammates and coaches. On the other hand, female footballers feel that that should be accepted socially first before the coaches convince them to put more effort and dedication at their work. According to a male coach, in order to excel, people need influence to struggle and work hard. DeBoer7 explains that gender comes in the relationship of acceptance for one to struggle. Female players need acceptance before they are committed to performing while male players need to perform before to expect acceptance. Male coaches also feel that they drive male players and lead women players. This is because, with women footballers, the male coaches’ effectiveness is through their ability to relate well. Female footballers should feel that the coaches care about them and feel a connection that is beyond the game. A male coach training female footballers should, therefore, possess excellent communication skills and be capable of relating well with the team. They need a personal connection with the female team for them to be successful. Flood and Hellstedt8 explains that for an effective male coach for men’s team, there is no need for personal rapport though respect is essential, as this is the degree of their relationship. In women’s team, they consider respect as part of the game and influenced by personal connection. Women need to feel that the coach care for them beyond their capabilities in soccer.9 This fact brings about differences in competitive orientations, in relations, to performance in addition, relationships. Coaching is a male dominated profession despite the society today where women have achieved more equality. Soccer being a unique sport, smaller clubs hire one person for coaching both men and women players. Male and female players’ reports that the common qualities needed to build a successful relationship include trust, commitment, respect and care. To analyze the relationship between the coach and the footballer, they used symbolic interaction to reveal the theoretic perspective used by male coaches and their perceptions in relating to female and male players. Symbolic interactionism involves a psychological approach that helps in assessing the coach-player relationship.10 Conclusion Male coaches perceive a difference in coaching male footballers and female footballers. Male coaches’ perceive male footballers as the same stimuli and treat them all the same as what is necessary is respect for each player. However, female players tend to display praise behaviors, use more pre-instruction, and management behaviors than men. Male coaches’ tend to show more scolding behaviors and concurrent instruction, unlike female coaches. They spend more time controlling and providing technical instructions to the male players while spend more time providing general encouragement to the female players. However, there are more similarities of coaching men and women than the differences. This is because both the coach and player need an effective and positive relationship. Bibliography Anderson, Denis. M. and Dixon, Anthony W., ‘Winning isn‘t everything: Goal orientation and gender differences in university leisure-skills classes,’ Recreational Sports Journal, 33 (2009), 54–64. Creswell, John.W., Research design, qualitative, quantitative and mixed method approaches (3rd ed.), (Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 2009). Davis, Louis and Jowett, Sophia, ‘Investigating the interpersonal dynamics between coaches and athletes based on fundamental principles of attachment,’ Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 4 (2010), 112–132. Dawson, Brain, ‘Soccer shorts,’ Soccer Journal, (2007), 59–60. DeBoer, Kathleen J., Gender and competition: How men and women approach work and play differently, (Monterey, CA: Coaches Choice, 2004). Ens, James T. ‘Gestalt Principles of Perception, Cognitive Science,’ Nature Publishing Group. Women’s Studies International Forum, 33 (2003), 464–472. Flood, S. E. & Hellstedt, J. C., ‘Gender differences in motivation for intercollegiate athletic participation, ‘Journal of Sport Behavior, 14 (2001), 159–167. Frey, M., ‘College coaches‘ experiences with stress, Problem solvers have problems, too,’ The Sport Psychologist, 21(2007), 38–57. Hanrahan, Stephanie and Cerin, Ester, ‘Gender, level of participation, and type of sport: Differences in achievement goal orientation and attributional style,’ Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 12 (2009), 508–513. Palmer, Stephen E., Visual perception of objects, Handbook of Psychology, Experimental psychology (John Wiley and Sons. Monterey, CA: Coaches Choice, 2003). Read More