Last week I had the honor to hold a presentation for WANG Top Sport. This is a high school where social skills, education and topp sport are developed under one roof.
I talked about our perspective on a long term holistic development of athletes. It is important to see that a sports career is often very short and our responsibility as coaches is much bigger than only to “produce” top athletes. We have to be focused on the development of personalities. We should teach them values that are important throughout life. We should never underestimate our impact as role models. Athletes might do what as we say but doing as we do is much easier. If I want my kids to take of their shoes when they enter the house nothing works better than taking of the shoes myself.
We have to represent the values, which means we have to live them in daily life. Our values in Norwegian Ski Jumping are respect, humbleness and joy. We respect eachother, we are humble in our view on others and we remind us every day about how much joy we get from doing what we love to do. Our vision is to develop independent athletes focused on a stable enduring process which will open chances for high perfomance over time.
We have the dream that all athletes will manage to reach their top performance which will vary from person to person. But hopefully they will at one point quit their sport looking back on a good time. That may lead to some of them continuing in ski jumping as coaches, judges, mentors or other positions. We are a part of something bigger and our common goal is to create unforgettable moments for all people involved in our sport.