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I cannot believe that this forum exists and I have never visited. Currently I am the coach of the Ohio Rifle and Pistol Junior Pistol team. After viewing some of the past posts I see that we as coaches all suffer from the same problems when it comes to kids and shooting. Currently my troubles are lack of interested kids, lack of future funding and keeping the kids I have interested. Another gripe is working around school sports, football to be exact. I wish I have the kind of control over my kids families and lives that the football coaches have.
Lets here what yall have to say.
THanks
Fred T

At Ohio, i'll bet football does take priority. Not too many teams are ranked number one right now (yours to be exact)

Fred T wrote:List
I cannot believe that this forum exists and I have never visited. Currently I am the coach of the Ohio Rifle and Pistol Junior Pistol team. After viewing some of the past posts I see that we as coaches all suffer from the same problems when it comes to kids and shooting. Currently my troubles are lack of interested kids, lack of future funding and keeping the kids I have interested. Another gripe is working around school sports, football to be exact. I wish I have the kind of control over my kids families and lives that the football coaches have.
Lets here what yall have to say.
THanks
Fred T

Are you a collegiate team or local club team? As to the problems that you have described they are nothibng unique. We all suffer the same problems. It would also help if you decide what kind of club you want and to near your focus. If you are doing most, if not all the work in the club, you will burn yourself out trying to be all things to everybody. I have limited time and club resources so I try give the more serious kids challegnes by holding regular sanctioned competition whether though the NRA, USA Shooting, or CMP. Hopefully by giving the kids small and then bigger goals as they progress will help them become more interested, in other words, keeping them challenged is your challenge and in the world of video games and a generation that requires instant satisfaction can make the task even more challenging.

The others that aren't really that interested in competiting at that level you can try and keep them interested by giving them other lower level goals such as earning their badges pins though NRA or CMP shooting programs. If you are fortunate to have some paretnal involvement get one or all of them involved in running this part of the program. The hardest thing is trying to find the right button to push for each kid to keep them interested. I just wished I or most of us coaches had the time and energy to find the button on each kid, so I end up selecting the kids who show the most interest and devoting the limited club resources to those kids. The others usually weren't that interested to begin with and would have quite anyway. For several years I tried keeping all the kids interested and for most of them their real interests were really some place else, so if you have limited resources and worse yet very little to no help you can only do some much.

Randy and Guest

I am running a junior pistol program,local club team, I take shooters from 14 til they are no longer juniors. Range time is not really a problem in the summer, getting the kids there on a regular basis is. This time of year range time id a pain because our indoor range is so heavily scheduled that there is alway something scheduled. I have to wait for another program to go by the wayside before getting a "night" for the kids. Since some of the other program are junior programs too I will not press the issue. We can practice on most sunday evenings and that makes me happy.

I know that my problems are not unique, I just wanted to start some discussion between coaches and program directors to see what we are doing and kind of share and trade ideas and maybe the kids will benifit from the discussion. You hit the nail right on the head with the instand gratification thing. Shooting is hard work and sometimes it takes months to attain your goal. It takes a certain kind of kid to stick with it that long, most would rather play video games and just hit the reset button when things don't go their way. One of my female shooters sums it up best" Shooting is kind of like life, every ten shots you get a clean target, just like tomorrow is another day." As far as hitting the right button on every kid that is a hard nut to crack, some just want to shoot, some want to shoot real well and others are being force by their parents just like so many other sports. I try to weed them out as soon as I can but sometimes it takes a while.
Thanks for the reply
Fred

Wow .... this is almost a topic for a long dinner at Chili's ... so much we could all contribute and learn.

Some short thoughts:

1) I'm always first to the range and only cancel a practice when I'm out of town. (We practice 3 nights per week)
I want to make a point to the kids that even if they are not there, I am. I've had maybe 10-12 practices over the last few years that the coach is the only one there .... I use those to try different pellets in different guns, check pellet drop at the silhouette yardages,and other things I don't seem to get lots of time to do.

2) I keep track of every single target they shoot. Excel is wonderful. If "Jimmy's" mom or dad (usually Jimmy knows) wants to know why their kids is not progressing and Sally is .... I can open my notebook and the first thing I can show them is that, "well Sally makes twice as many practices as Jimmy"

3) I'm fortunate in that I do have quite a few dedicated kids, so if there is another that is not listening or taking advice, at least I can acutally say "have it your way", and go work with another shooter

The ones that kill me are those that can walk in every so often (every few months) and fire a 520 in sporter .... feel good about it, and come back in another few months ... the "just enough to get by" kids ... those are the ones that get me wrapped up around an axle .......

In short I have to take my satisfaction in the kids that do progress. But you know I have had some kids that are not my most dedicated shooters and their parents have come to me and said that since they have started shooting, their attitudes and grades are much better. I'm humbled in those situations, because that is what it really is all about.

JH
I see that they make kids the same way all over the country. I too have the couple who show up on league night and shoot a 250 at a national match course and say that is good enough. Talk about pressing your button! I also have been told that shooting has helped with other things amn I too am humbled by those comments. Just when you think you are not making a difference..........
I also have the ones who try their heart out and are not progressing like they should, that is my fault because I cannot give them what they need to be sucessful, that really frustrates to me. Same program, same ammount of training, some get it and some do not.
Fred T

Fred T wrote:JH
I see that they make kids the same way all over the country. I too have the couple who show up on league night and shoot a 250 at a national match course and say that is good enough. Talk about pressing your button! I also have been told that shooting has helped with other things amn I too am humbled by those comments. Just when you think you are not making a difference..........
I also have the ones who try their heart out and are not progressing like they should, that is my fault because I cannot give them what they need to be sucessful, that really frustrates to me. Same program, same ammount of training, some get it and some do not.
Fred T

I see that they make kids the same way all over the country. I too have the couple who show up on league night and shoot a 250 at a national match course and say that is good enough. Talk about pressing your button! I also have been told that shooting has helped with other things amn I too am humbled by those comments. Just when you think you are not making a difference..........
I also have the ones who try their heart out and are not progressing like they should, that is my fault because I cannot give them what they need to be sucessful, that really frustrates to me. Same program, same ammount of training, some get it and some do not.
Fred T[/quote]

I have a girl who is shooting in the 570s with less then 4 hours of practice a month. She wants to get better, but getting her to the range to practice hasn't been working out very well. She is always having something else to do. Her and the father have expressed interest in doing better, but I am not seeing much action from the parents to help there 15 year old daughter get to the range. They keep complaining about the amount of money they have spent on the sport, which if you examine the actual dollars they have spent it has been pretty minimal. The kids are paying for their own rifles and most of the shooting equipment and cloths belong to the club. They only thing they have spent on the equipment has been a couple of inexpensive pants, boots, and some front sight inserts. In my opnion, one parent is just interested if there daughter does better and the other is just not willing to push the matter. I got another complaint last week about the money they spent going to the NRA Junior Air Gun Championship, which was a couple of hundred dollars. I told them I would gladly trade them the bill they payed in comparison to the $1600 the club spent on all the kids that went. There are times when I wonder if it is all woth it.

Never doubt that what a shooter learns from a good coach will "stick with them". We might not be around to see the effect of what they have learned but it will be there. The stories of successes in life from what experiences (good and bad) that shooters have had will fill this forum and a lot of coaching classes, and all of them should help coaches and team advisors keep working for the next shooter to come along.

So much of what is taught in shooting are personal skills that make a better shooter, and once learned stay with a person all of their life. Sure we can help a shooter score better in practice or in a match, but the work ethic, personal responsibility, and taking control of a situation are behaviors that will stay with a person forever.

When a lot of good people take time to work with good kids, we all make a difference.

So much for a philosophy of why we coach young shooters.

Randy Posted:

I got another complaint last week about the money they spent going to the NRA Junior Air Gun Championship, which was a couple of hundred dollars. I told them I would gladly trade them the bill they payed in comparison to the $1600 the club spent on all the kids that went. There are times when I wonder if it is all woth it.

Yeah ... the money is a funny thing. I look at some parents that think nothing about shelling out a few thousand for jetskis, ATVs, or a motorcycle .... but $300 for an air rifle (sporter here)?????? Why that's just an overpriced BB gun..... I can only smile

As I looked around the coach conference the past few years, one thing I saw was that the coach's that are "passionate" (for want of a better term), pouring their own money into the program is not much of a worry. I have to thank my wife for not getting on my case. Maybe she figures it's better spent there than a casino on Wed nights ..... whatever the reason I'm thankful there. (She's gotten to be a pretty good stats person and target scorer as well)

I rented a trailer this year to haul gear to the NRA Airgun Team Nationals. We had 4 teams go plus we brought up a bunch of the targetworks traps for the event. It was about $400, but well worth the cost as we were able to keep the other vehicles free for clothes, sleeping bags, etc. The NRA was going to dump all the cardboard that was placed behind the traps, but Venskoski gave it to us. Now I have cardboard for all our air rifle traps and smallbore backers for this year. Shoot, my fuel alone was about $560. (we had 4 vehicles .... and I got 18mpg pulling the trailer) Was it worth it? Absolutely .... A whole week and a half with my daughter. As the commerical says ..... priceless

Fred T wrote:Randy and Guest

I am running a junior pistol program,local club team, I take shooters from 14 til they are no longer juniors.
Fred

Maybe it's different for air pistol. I run an air rifle team. We start the kids as young as age 8.

By the time kids these days are 14 they are in High School and most are way to busy to start a new activity.

But get a kid started at age 8-12 and you have a better chance of them sticking with it in my opinion. That way by the time they hit High School they are already committed to the sport.

The best way to attract and keep junior shooters after they discover girls and earn their driver’s license is to quit recruiting juniors. Sound counter-intuitive but it is not. The following will actually increase the number of junior shooters, increase the attendance at practice and increase the quality of the practice sessions.

Focus your efforts on “family shooting”. Bring the adults and kids into the mix at the same time. One of the spin-off activities obviously would be junior level competition but don’t make that the apparent focus. It works for quite a few reasons. I’m pressed for time over the next few days so I can’t post at length now, but would be glad to list my reasons in a few days if anyone posts that they are interested.

Lee

My junior shooters are all pistol shooters and they compete in tetrathlon events, so shooting is one of their four disciplines. These youngsters start at 7 or 8 I think. They come to our club for concentrated sessions before departing. Some come back for a while but not as many or as often as I'd like. We keep things open for them and even ran a special competition for them to try and keep them keen on the shooting. I have no doubt that they will pass through our doors again as will some of their new competitors.

They also realise the benefits as a couple of them qualified for the biggest competition of the year, and probably wouldn't have done without the shooting coaching.

Rob.

Lee Sellers - Guest wrote:The best way to attract and keep junior shooters after they discover girls and earn their driver’s license is to quit recruiting juniors. Sound counter-intuitive but it is not. The following will actually increase the number of junior shooters, increase the attendance at practice and increase the quality of the practice sessions.

Focus your efforts on “family shooting”. Bring the adults and kids into the mix at the same time. One of the spin-off activities obviously would be junior level competition but don’t make that the apparent focus. It works for quite a few reasons. I’m pressed for time over the next few days so I can’t post at length now, but would be glad to list my reasons in a few days if anyone posts that they are interested.

Lee

Lee,

I'd be interested in hearing about your family activities. We have a pot luck at the end of the season and have parents shoot against the kids. No one misses it! I'd like something that would bring the parents and rest of the kids in during our regular practices.

Dan

Lee, I'd be interested in hearing about your family activities.

Fred, where in Ohio are you located? I want to get into 10m rifle shooting, but can't find any clubs, etc. in the Cleveland area.

I participate in a junior archery club, and retention is a problem there, too. First, I must say that I have ZERO airgun shooting experience (except for my BB gun). I did shoot .22 rifle on a college fun team MANY years ago. I don't even own an air rifle yet. However, I have been involved in youth archery for the past couple of years. Here are a few of the things we do to try to keep kids interested.

1. Kids can shoot for $5 per week. Meetings are Saturday mornings, indoors in winter, outdoors in summer. Membership in the club is $25-$35/year for singles/families. Adults (parents) are encouraged to shoot too, for the same $5 per week. ALL equipment is provided by the club, and archers buy their own as their interest and finances allow.

2. Our program follows the Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) program by the National Archery Association (NAA). We also have an STP (Senior Training Program) for adults, also by the NAA.

3. The JOAD program is for juniors, up to age 18. STP if for everyone else. Both programs have a published list of achievement levels, from qualified archer up to gold olympian, with rewards for reaching every level. Each level gets a certificate and a jacket patch. The gold olympian level gets a jacket and recognition in the NAA national magazine. Every week certificates and patches are awarded at the meeting, so everyone can share in the archer's achievement.

4. Participation drops when kids get into high school, mostly due to other activities, cars, jobs and girls. Those who really have an interest stay with the program and participate in regional and national competition as much as possible. Participation DIES when kids go to college. Some will come back once or twice during vaction or holidays if possible. Otherwise, they are gone until they are in their thirties or forties, with kids of their own.

5. Getting kids interested when they are young is key. They are awarded as they progress, so they feel good about what they are doing. Participation at regional and national events is encouraged, and other parents support those who's parents can't/won't travel by driving, sharing rooms, etc.

6. We are going to start a recruitment drive in the spring, to try to up our regular participation from the current average of 25 members per week.

7. We have at least 7 certified coaches, of different levels and abilities. There is always a coach available if the regulars can't make a meeting. We also have back-ups for collecting money, buying new equipment, organizing events, etc. This is a major factor in preventing burnout.

8. We have fun shoots on certain occasions for just fun. We had a big Halloween shoot, turkey and ham shoots for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and balloon shoots outdoors in the summer. Variety is good.

9. We have the same problems with good shooters only coming once in a while. We have learned not to aggrevate ourselves by worrying about them. If they don't have the desire to participate, you can't beat it into them.

10. Most of all, make it FUN for the kids. Are the 3-a-week practices for the coach's benefit or the kids? Just like rifle and pistol shooting, archery practice makes perfect. But realistically, the time isn't always available to shoot that often. If the kids want to get better, they will make the time to practice. If not, do the best you can with them.

Sorry so long a post.

Steve