Many young people have dreams and aspirations of becoming elite athletes in sport. The concept of talent identification and development involves coaches and sport scientists using a variety of physiological, technical, tactical, psychological, and performance assessments to identify, select and develop the talents of players so that they can support player participation and performance in sport. Talent identification and development is also an integral part of pathways in sport and is invested in heavily by sporting organisations, because identifying and developing players is not only integral to player and team success, but also to enhanced participation and financial sustainability. In this unit, students will be introduced to the theory and applied practices associated with youth athlete talent identification and development. Specifically, this will focus on talent development pathways, potential predictors of talent, and talent identification processes. In addition, there will be an industry engagement component to the unit, whereby students will be exposed to real-world talent identification and recruitment strategies, by understanding the challenges youth coaches face during the talent identification process though external site visits.
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
Selected readings will be made available via the unit VU Collaborate site.
This unit is not compulsory for any specific course. Depending on the course you study, this unit may be taken as an elective.