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Ivan Kantarovsky, Director at Ryve Sports Institute.
How to Keep Players and Coaches Playing Rugby
One of today’s trending topics in rugby development is how to keep players, coaches, and “admins” participating. Moreover, how to get new people to come along and experience this fantastic game.
There are different issues to discuss on the topic and ideas that can help spread rugby throughout your local community.
Creating and Sharing a Strong Rugby Culture
On this matter, creating and sharing a strong culture is vital to running a team or a club. It allows people to connect to certain identity and values.
The stronger that inner culture is, the better the chances are of carrying forth a long-term plan to develop players. From knowing the basics as rookies, all the way to having former players turned into coaches, referees or administration staff.
Of course, there is always a certain number of players that will eventually quit and go a different direction, but if you take the time to build a strong culture, and then make an extra effort to exercise it. implement it, and transmit it to your players every day; you will see a HUGE difference.
Engagement and retention is all about letting people feel proud of being part of your team. It’s about giving them a reason to believe being on your team is “super cool”.
Laszlo Bock, former vice-president of People Operations at Google, writes on his book “Work Rules” that Google’s culture is about having fun (from the Googlers’ point of view). He says that the way to keep people happy about being part of Google is “searching for magical moments and sharing them with the rest.” This allows everyone to feel engaged with the company’s mission. I believe we can take a page from Bock’s book and implement this concept into rugby team culture.
There are many ways to build team culture and living up to it. We, at Ryve Sports Institute, share one alternative in our “Planning and Administrating a Season” course.
It’s about being “Part of the Crew… part of the ship,” as one of the Pirates of the Caribbean said on the famous Disney movie.
If we want to retain our members and get new ones… I believe we must start here. Start with culture, passion, and a sense of belonging.