I'll spare you the in-depth explanation of what GAG is.
Here is a good explanation by the CSA's Ray Clark in PDF format.
Here is a good video explanation conducted by the OSA and York Region's Bobby Lennox during our Learning Facilitator Workshop of 2011. I am in this with the red track top at the beginning.
Last night, I was caught a bit off guard. We usually get a varying amount of coaches out to these things, between 5 and 10. Last night we had about 25 coaches out. We've made a habit out of bringing in guest teams to ensure we have a session to demo.
The guest team were the 1998 girls. I always enjoy working with this bunch and their coach, Erik Opala, is a great guy and a super coach. Had I known this many coaches would have shown up, I would have run the session with the coaches on the field. I think we would get more out of the session with coaches directly on the field.
We had good questions but, more important, we had good discussion on the side how to apply this to their specific teams.
Here is my take on the GAG model: if you are a new coach, you can use the model to set conditions during the Activity part to bring out a facet of the game you want to improve and get a bit more out of your team. If you are a very experienced coach, you can get a heck of a lot out of your team using GAG.
GAG allows you to get more game time in your sessions and instill some new ideas directly into the context of a game situation. There is a time and place for a GAG session. It doesn't replace all styles of training, but is a very effective addition to your catalog of sessions.
Another observation Rob Lalama and I shared was how many new faces we have coaching at our club. A lot of nice people who are very interested in delivering a good program. I would like to see more females involved so we'll have to keep pressing for that.
I look forward to our next coaching session at the club and I hope to use the coaches on the field.
