Rossendale Harriers – nurturing older teenage athletes to retain talent
Rossendale Harriers have been working hard to improve the retention of older teenage athletes in the club and help aid their transition to senior athletes.
Having recognised that teenage years are a key period in the development of young athletes, but also that drop-out rates are typically high, the club have put systems in place to support the athlete journey through to the senior age group.
Rossendale Harriers have listened to athletes in the older teenage age group on what they felt the club could do to improve, and acted on their feedback.
Coach and Junior Co-ordinator at Rossendale Harriers, Nick Pilkington, told us:
"This has been a wide lens approach; as well as looking at our training sessions, we have heavily invested in our facilities, resurfacing our track and refurbishing our club gym, as well as updating our website."
Creating a transitional group to bridge the gap
The club have created a transitional group, which gives dedicated time for their older teenage athletes to train with seniors in a safe environment, and allows them to get to know each other through training, and for all parties to learn more about each other, taking the fear out of change.
The coaches in the club were inspired to introduce the sessions because of their own children's experience and worked collectively to develop this.
"Part of the feedback from our athletes was they were finding the thought of moving from junior groups to senior groups daunting. They had two main concerns - these being concerns over their ability to handle the senior sessions, and not being familiar with the seniors."
"Our club believes that by investing in our juniors, we are developing the athletes of the future, so this feedback was key. It allowed our coaches and club officials to come up with creative ways to address their concerns. From the feedback received, we have created specialist discipline sessions (dedicated Spring/Summer Fell group) and the junior/senior pathway group was born."
By creating the junior/senior pathway group, the club’s juniors are beginning to form friendships with their senior athletes, whilst also being gradually exposed to the type of training sessions they complete.
"This is giving our juniors the confidence that transitioning to senior groups is not as daunting as they perhaps first felt. It is important to note that in these sessions, our coaches manage the workload of the juniors, to ensure there is no risk of over-training/injury."
The importance of athlete feedback
We asked Nick what advice he would give to other clubs around retaining those older teenage groups of athletes.
"We would suggest engaging with these athletes, listening to the feedback they provide and being creative in how their feedback can be acted upon.
"It is also important to revisit the feedback. Since the junior/senior pathway group was set up, we have asked the juniors in this session for their feedback, to sense-check if the actions taken have been successful.
"The feedback on the group has been very positive; our juniors are enjoying the sessions and the seniors have also enjoyed seeing the future of our club join their sessions."