Athlete-centred coaching: An applied example from junior international field hockey

The extent to which the concept of athlete-centred coaching (Kidman, 2001, 2005; Kidman & Lombardo, 2010) has resonated with the international community has exceeded almost all other coaching discourse over the past decade (Nelson, Cushion, Potrac, & Groom, 2014). As well as featuring prominently in numerous academic coaching texts (e.g. Cassidy, Jones, & Potrac, 2009; Gilbert, 2017; Light, 2017; Pill, 2018), athlete-centred coaching has also been embraced by a large number of National Governing Bodies (NGBs) both in the UK (e.g. England Hockey (Great Britain Hockey, 2015), England Rugby (Rugby Football Union, 2017), England Netball (England Netball, 2007) and the Football Association (The Football Association, 2015)) as well as in numerous other countries around the world including Canada, Finland and New Zealand - to name but a few (Romar, Sarén, & Hastie, 2016). Furthermore, athlete-centred coaching has also been espoused by some highly successful field hockey coaches (e.g. Ric Charlesworth (Light, 2013), Danny Kerry (Richardson, 2015) and Beth Anders (Gilbert, 2017)).