Talent Identification & Development

Talent identification is important in every country and sport because it can help uncover good youth athletes if done right. Youth coaches should be able to identify a good youth athlete based on a set of already displayed attributes they deem as important in the sport. However, the ability for youth coaches to identify and patiently nurture undisplayed potential in youth athletes requires more experience and knowledge. One problem with talent identification among youth coaches is their lack of understanding of the relative age effect among youth. Relative age effect is a bias among coaches and scouts who tend to choose youth athletes who were born earlier in the relevant selection period than those born later. In a local school context, students born in January are more likely to be chosen for the national school games as compared to someone born in December. Students born later are likely to be physically less mature and might lose out by failing to make the cut even though they could improve significantly when given more time. Therefore, youth coaches should consider the concept of Relative Age Effect when identifying talented youth to prevent those with great uncovered potential from slipping away.

One problem with talent development is the overemphasis on deliberate practice where youth athletes need to constantly engage in repetitive practice to perfect a sport specific skill. In layman’s terms, the more an athlete practices, the better he/she will get and if they want to maximise the amount of practice, start earlier. This issue is strongly linked to early specialisation and to the 10,000-hour rule by K. Anderson Ericsson which was made popular by writer Malcolm Gladwell where 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is needed to become world class in any field.

However, youth coaches need to look deeper in this matter. Another study by Gobet and Campitelli (Hambrick et al., 2017) found that it ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours of deliberate practice for chess players to attain the “master” status. While most studies found that the more you practice, the better you are at the skill, it only explains 18% of the difference in ability in sports (McNamara, 2016). Youth coaches need to understand that talent development involves multiple factors such as the age exposed to sport, quality of practice, genetics, cognitive, psychological traits (IQ and EQ), etc. Excessive practice could possibly induce side effects like overuse injuries and burnout. Therefore, while deliberate practice is important when developing a skill, more of it is not always better to properly develop a youth athlete. Youth coaches should have a healthy balance between deliberate play and practice.

Implications of poor talent identification and development

• Athlete burnout

• Overuse injury

• Sport dropout

Tips for talent identification and development

• Ensure training is productive and efficient by training less. Training sessions should be no more than 2 hours each time.

• Expose athlete to multiple sports to prevent burnout and prevent injury

• Avoid early specialisation and encourage late specialisation at about 14 years old.

Reference

Hambrick. D, Ferreira. F & J M. Henderson. (2017, March 12). The 10,000-hour rule is wrong and perpetuates a cruel myth. Retrieved July 24, 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10000-hour-rule-is-wrong-and-perpetuates-a-cruel-myth-2017-3?IR=T

McNamara, B. (2016, June 8). Sports practice accounts for just 1 percent of elite athletes' performance differences. Retrieved July 24, 2017, from http://linkis.com/www.eurekalert.org/p/73HSI

Further reading Reflection on the inaccuracy of 10,000-hour rule to develop talent How exposure to multi-sport aids in talent development Video to help youth coaches understand what is talent