Working within a community team, we wanted the players (U14 girls, with many who had played at school before joining the team) to set goals and challenge themselves, but we didn’t want to make a big deal about it.
When meeting with other coaches, some were concerned that it would be off-putting for the players and that it would make the environment too performance oriented.
As not every player came each week, some had more experience than others of playing. As a result, the coaches wanted to create an informal way to capture the players’ goals.
We came up with the idea of post-it notes and a capture journal. The original plan was that we would keep the goals that were achieved in a team journal, but this changed when the players wanted to keep their own.
We discussed goal setting at the end of a session, asking the players to imagine, but not share, where they wanted to be in a few years’ time.