Kevins
Hurling and Camogie Club

Player Pathway

Introduction

Welcome to Kevin’s Hurling and Camogie Club Player Pathway. This Pathway has been created to provide a structured, consistent framework to help guide coaches, managers, mentors and parents who play an active role in the development of our young players.

It is intended, at its most basic form, to give our young players the best opportunity to succeed at whatever level they may play and to reach their full potential “doing the right thing, at the right time and in the right way.” This document should be viewed as a route map which sets out the key characteristics and identifies the age-appropriate content (technical, physical and game specific) that should be coached or practiced at a particular age and stage of the player’s career. To further enhance the development of the player we have included skills challenges to correspond with stages of development. It should be noted that these are guidelines and recommendations for coaches, managers, mentors and parents and may be used with a degree of flexibility. They are not written in stone, as players will grow, develop and learn at different rates through their lives. This is a general guide to bear in mind when working with players.

Kevin’s Hurling and Camogie Player Pathway is a live document and will be reviewed regularly and updated to reflect new learning and best practices amongst all our coaches.

 

Our Club’s Long-Term Development Model

The 7 Stages of our long term development model are summarised as follows:

  • Active Fun start – Fun & part of daily life.
  • Fundamental – Build overall Physical Literacy & Motor Skills.
  • Learning to Train – Learn Fundamental Sports Skills.
  • Training to Train – build ‘the engine’ and consolidate sport-specific skills.
  • Training to Compete – fine-tune ‘the engine’, skills and performance.
  • Training to Win –maximize performance, skills and ‘engine’.

 

How Can Parents and Carers Help?

Attend matches and watch their children play

  • Ask the children how they are getting on in training.
  • Go for a few pucks with them some evenings
  • Come and support all the Kevin’s Hurling and Camogie teams, along with their children.
  • Become an active member of the club.
  • Assist in activities across the club if possible.

 

The 5 Stages of Coaching

There are 5 key stages outlined in our pathway which have detailed Player characteristics. They describe the practical elements that must be coached during these ages. For more information for the specific age groups you can click on the links:

 

Learning To Master The Ball  4-6 Years Should be about fun and participation with key emphasis on physical literacy and fundamental movement skills with the ball.
Learning To Use The Ball  7-9 Years Major skills learning phase where all the basic skills in Hurling/Camogie are learned. Emphasis on the fundamental movements.
Learning To Play Together  10-12 Years Emphasis on understanding how to play and work together as a team.
Learning About Positions  13-15 Years The principles of play and applying good game sense increase
Learning To Perform  16-18 Years Combining all aspects of performance including decision making

 

Most of the content from the Kevins Player Pathway Final document launched in 2020 is contained on these pages, but you can download the full document by clicking on the link. It contains additional links to coaching resources and guidance on training. Please also check out the Coaching Resource page which contains further resources. The Coaching Resources page is a live document and if you find a useful link that we don’t have, please let us know.