Last Wednesday saw the Cricket Leinster Development Officers along with coaching staff deliver their annual coaching workshop for school teachers. This year we opened it up for primary school teachers as well as secondary school teachers. The workshop was delivered at Wesley College, Dundrum. It was attended by 11 Leinster based PE teachers and primary school teachers from schools including Dundalk Grammer School, The High School, Kill O' the Grange, Mount Sackville, The Teresian School, Wesley College and Woodbrook College.
It was fortunate that we could use Wesley's indoor facilities as the weather was typically Irish! The 12 Wesley boys from 1st year helped out on the day as players for the sessions, while the teachers observed and asked questions. The sessions throughout the course were led by South Dublin Cricket in the Community Development Officer, Naomi Scott-Hayward, Cricket Leinster's Development Manager, Brían O'Rourke and Leinster coaches, Kenny Carroll and Chris Wallace.
The workshop focused on basic techniques along with small-sided games that can be easily delivered in schools yards, playing fields or sports halls. We started with a 30 minute sample of a school yard session followed by batting and bowling techniques and drills as well as games. These included Diamond Cricket, Continuous Cricket, Pairs Cricket, Bowling in Pairs, Target Bowling and how to set up drills for practicing the fundamentals of batting and bowling to correct technique with players.
When all the players had got a full 2hours of cricket in and the teachers had time for a Q&A, an explanation of how pairs cricket and normal 11 a-side cricket differs, was given. This was followed by a hand out of umpire signals and symbols used in the scorebook. We completed an over or two of scoring on the whiteboard to finish off the course.
The majority of the PE teachers were fairly new to the game and gained valuable knowledge in the different techniques involved and also gained some useful ideas regarding games for use with their own students in the coming weeks.
We hope to see some of the teachers again on the upcoming Welcome to Coaching Courses and the Scorer's course.