Wilson (2000) defined volunteering as any activity in which time is given freely to benefit another person, group or cause. ‘Volunteering constitutes one of the most important pro‐social activities.’ (Meier & Stutzer, 2008) this is vital as when volunteering it can help you gain more knowledge about the area you what to delve into before you get it as an actual job, so it can be like a trail to see if that is the area you want to progress into.
Benefits to volunteering
There are many different benefits to volunteering whether that be for the volunteer or the club. Argyle (1999) stated that volunteers see results as an important source of satisfaction. This can be a benefit for the individual as it can show that their hard work, time and effort can account for something positive as seeing results will give them the confidence to carry it on in the future. Continuously, research studies show that most people believe that helping others is a good way to gain fulfilment for yourself. This is another benefit for the volunteer as their work is making yourself feel better showing that it is worth being a volunteer just for the personal beliefs and achievements.
I have benefitted from volunteering as it has given me the opportunity to coach in a variety of different environments and coach a wide range of participants giving me more experience every time I coach. The main skills I feel I have developed is my confidence, as I now feel confident to coach any group at any given time and produce a good session. Furthermore, my communication skills have improved as I feel I can communicate in many different ways and do this effectively, I feel like tone of voice is key when coaching the younger age groups as this will get them more engaged and they are more likely to listen.
Challenges a volunteer may faces
On the other hand volunteering can propose many challenges. This many include taking up a lot of time, energy, skills and no pay. (Donnelley & Harvey, 2010) this is a huge challenge as a volunteer must be able to balance their busy life schedule to maintain the standards of being a volunteer and this may apply added pressure to their daily life. Furthermore, according to Hoeber (2010) volunteers efforts go unrecognised or unnoticed. This may make a volunteer unmotivated as all the hard work they have put in may for under the radar and not get thought about, potentially leading to the volunteer quitting the role.
What are my next steps within volunteering
Within the college I currently volunteer by coaching the women’s football team alongside another member of the class, which is discussed below, this placement will aid me to gain more knowledge about coaching in general and give me fresh ideas which I can transfer to other sessions.
Before the start of the year my aim for volunteering/work placement was to go into a school and shadow a PE teacher as this will help me gain the knowledge I need to progress in the career path I want. However, due to the current circumstances I felt like I was unable to enter a school setting as schools will not have allowed visitors in. To continue on, in the next year of my degree I will look to go into a school for my placement and work alongside a PE teacher as I feel this will benefit me as a person and give me that edge when applying for my teacher training qualification in the future.
Women’s football team
The women’s football team is a part of Wigan and Leigh college. It is based at Leigh college and is coached on the Leigh East astro turf every Wednesday afternoon 1-3pm.
To continue on, the history of the women’s football team is minimal as there are usually a lack of numbers that attend that is why the team can be a challenge as keeping up the participation levels will be hard. Throughout the coaching there are a variety of skills that can be developed and tasks and challenges that will be set.
Developing as coaches will help to use a variety of coaching methods such as being able to review sessions and try out new methods to see how well they carry out when coaching. The women’s team was chosen because it is a good opportunity to challenge a coach in a different environment. This is a challenge as there is a high number of dropouts in women’s sport as ‘Girls drop out of sport and physical activity at a faster rate than boys’ and ‘By age 14, only 1 in 10 girls are doing enough physical activity to benefit their health’ (Women’s sport and fitness foundation, 2015) therefore keeping them engaged at all times is vital to keep the team running.
This session plan worked out to be a very successful and effective drill as all of the participants was engaged fully within the drill due to the fun and competitive elements implemented. Furthermore, adaptations had to be put into place to make the drill work due to the amount of numbers that was involved. We had to change it to one feeder instead of two an then have the same drill set up elsewhere as there was limited numbers at this session. This drill could be changed in the future as it could be more game realistic as once the ball is played into the shooter after they’ve shot another team could get the ball and go on the counter attack therefore making it more game specific.
Reference list
Argyle, Michael (1999). Causes and Correlates of Happiness. In: Kahneman, Daniel, Ed Diener and Norbert Schwarz (Eds.). Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 353-73.
Donnelly, P., & Harvey, J. (2010). Volunteering and sport. In Routledge handbook of sports development (pp. 71-87). Routledge.
Hoeber, L. (2010). Experiences of volunteering in sport: Views from Aboriginal individuals. Sport Management Review, 13(4), 345-354.
Meier, S., & Stutzer, A. (2008). Is volunteering rewarding in itself?. Economica, 75(297), 39-59.
Wilson, J. (2000). Volunteering. Annual review of sociology, 26(1), 215-240.
Women’s sports and fitness foundation. (2015) Changing the game for girls. Retrieved from April, 2015, fromhttps://www.womeninsport.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Changing-the-Game -for-Girls-NGB-Factsheet.pdf?x99836
Reflective Coach 