ECB Coaches Association links Coaching Insight 2019 | Page 21

Engaging parents
The All Stars Cricket Challenge
With younger age groups, like All
Stars Cricket, get something simple
in place first up, but something that
the children will want to have their
parents there for. That could just be
having balls lined up on one side
of a rope, one per child, and asking
the parent to play catch over the
rope from their child.
Those kinds of games work just as
well at the end of a session, where
(if the parents haven’t stayed
around to help) you can finish
five minutes early and ask the
children to go and fetch their
parents for a catch, or a hit, or to
show them something they’ve been
working on.
That can extend into a children vs
parents game, which always prove
“The obvious thing
to do is also the most
important. Just ask.
Invite them to get
involved.”
popular in my experience. I used
to love beating my dad when I was
little, so having the opportunity to
do that at the end of training every
week would have given me that
extra push to try and make sure
he’d stuck around to take part.
Hopefully that initial involvement
they’ve had will keep them close by
– maybe in greater numbers than
you’d anticipated. If that’s the case,
and you run out of planned
parent-led activities, any spare
adult can be used to work with the
children while they wait for their
turn in a large activity. We all try
and plan sessions where there’s
no waiting in queues or sitting
doing nothing, but if you see that
happening send parents over to
play catch while they wait, or feed
a few balls for them to hit.
19