Top tips for player rotation this season
With winter sports codes beginning soon, it is important that we are #seasonready to ensure our tamariki and rangatahi have great sporting experiences this coming season.
In recent years, many sports codes have introduced rules where all players are required to play half a game, OR have equal playing time amongst the team’s members. Keeping track of this is hard, not just on the side-line but week to week. A study done by AUT researcher Simon Walters indicates children want to be given a fair opportunity to participate during sport. This can include having the opportunity to play in multiple positions and getting equal game time.
Further research conducted by Sport Waitakere’s Community Sport and Recreation Team Lead, Javeed Ali, on the Good Sports initiative1 found administrators in sport see the use of substitution maps or pre-planned substitutions positively as it takes away the context of the game when making substitutions.
Traditionally the use of spreadsheets or substitution maps takes a lot of pre-planning, but recent technology gains has seen an abundance of apps to do the hard work instead. The team at Sport Waitākere have shared their top three apps that allow you to keep track of your substitutions and make sure the children in your team get a fair turn.
The SubTime app is a great tool for coaches and managers. The app is developed for Soccer, Basketball, Field Hockey, Lacrosse and Hockey. It allows for you to use your own custom formations – which means that you can track positional changes too. This also means that if your sport is not on the app you can add your formation to make it work for you. The app shows you total time a player has been on the field and how long they have been on the field since substituted. The app also allows you to keep score and add notes per player.
CoachAny is a dedicated app to help coaches and managers of teams to know who your next substitutions are going to be. You simply load your team into the app, enter in the details of your game and it works out the rest for you.
SubNow is an easy to use app. Simply enter your team in and load up the parameters of your game, and you are away. Whilst it is a very intuitive app to use it has a few downfalls. Firstly, it is a paid app if you have more than six members in your team. Secondly, you cannot track how many minutes a player has actually played and thirdly, it is only available on iOS.
The great part of all these apps are that they provide alerts when it is time to get ready to make substitutions so you never forget.
Good SportsTM, a culture change initiative aimed at creating positive sporting experiences for children by educating and supporting the key adult influencers in youth sport, suggests that children in sport are made to feel that everyone matters.
To learn more about Good Sports visit https://aktive.org.nz/what-we-do/good-sports/ or reach out to Javeed Ali – javeed.ali@sportwaitakere.nz
1 - http://hdl.handle.net/10292/11722
Article added: Monday 24 May 2021