What happened to the Chinese Wayne Gretzky?
I've recently started a new job, working with some of the highest achieving students in the country. The types who have been top of every class they've ever been in, for whom an A is a bad mark and who have had a clear pathway obvious to them since starting primary school.
Their ability to absorb information quickly and effectively has been a revelation after a decade or so training people more at my own level. I can provide far more content, the questions asked are more relevant (and massively more frequent), in short the job is far easier.
It got me thinking about just how much actual impact we have when working with naturally talented people. Dan Micciche, an England U16 national football coach, estimates that 95% of an elite footballer is innate talent, and that the most a coach can do is try and add that extra 5% to allow them to make a career in the game. You can take super talented 8 year old kids, give them the best facilities, top class coaching and they are still no more likely to make it those signing their scholarship at 17 who have only played recreational football up to that point.
There is a joke in football coaching that whichever nation is successful in a tournament will have their system lauded and copied around the world. Before the world cup final the talk was all of the Parisian banlieues with their small concrete pitches where a huge number of the players had learned the game. Up against the French were the Croatians with their famous academies in Zagreb and Split allowing a country of 4 million people to maximise the talent available to them. Or should we follow Iceland who as a country of 300k reached the Euro 2016 quarter finals with their indoor football pitches and highly qualified coaches?
The missing factor in all these is sporting culture.
In sport we have the constant debate about who the greatest players of all time are. There are a few who are undisputed, like Wayne Gretzky. A Canadian ice hockey player who was so dominant that the records he set are regarded as unbeatable. But he was Canadian, and grew up in an area famous for ice hockey, with a hockey rink in his back garden. Pure randomness says there must be at least some people born with similar combinations of agile bodies and spatial awareness. But they haven't emerged because you need both that combination and exposure to ice hockey as a sport. How many Indian and Chinese Gretzkies have ended up living very normal lives? How much potential is wasted due to a lack of exposure to opportunity?
Or being the wrong gender. My cousin and I went on holiday together when about 16 years old, both football obsessed. One evening we were kicking a ball around after dinner when a girl of about 7 years old asked to join in. We said OK out of politeness assuming she would struggle to kick the ball back, only for her to be ridiculously good. She must have easily been in the top percentile for ability, and hopefully she continued to play for fun, but she would have still lacked the opportunity to turn her talent into a career.
This always makes me wonder why we have allowed such a narrow definition of education to take hold. The students I work with now thrived in that system but what I have also seen is that outside of that range of measurement their abilities are less obvious. Academic brilliance doesn't always translate into an eye for design, a steady hand, spatial awareness, empathy, or a charismatic personality.
So whilst I bemoan the waste of talent that comes from a lack of exposure to a wide range of sports I worry more that a lack of variety at school is wasting far more talent. The system at the moment is run by, and for, those who thrived in it. But the thing is these people would do well whatever the system, these are our youth footballers who make it anyway after just playing with their friends.
What I think people need is exposure and experience in as wide a range of activities, academic and vocational as possible. It may turn out the student in the bottom 30% academically is in the top 1% at something else. But unless they get a chance to try it they will never know. They will just be a Chinese Wayne Gretzky.
Their ability to absorb information quickly and effectively has been a revelation after a decade or so training people more at my own level. I can provide far more content, the questions asked are more relevant (and massively more frequent), in short the job is far easier.
It got me thinking about just how much actual impact we have when working with naturally talented people. Dan Micciche, an England U16 national football coach, estimates that 95% of an elite footballer is innate talent, and that the most a coach can do is try and add that extra 5% to allow them to make a career in the game. You can take super talented 8 year old kids, give them the best facilities, top class coaching and they are still no more likely to make it those signing their scholarship at 17 who have only played recreational football up to that point.
There is a joke in football coaching that whichever nation is successful in a tournament will have their system lauded and copied around the world. Before the world cup final the talk was all of the Parisian banlieues with their small concrete pitches where a huge number of the players had learned the game. Up against the French were the Croatians with their famous academies in Zagreb and Split allowing a country of 4 million people to maximise the talent available to them. Or should we follow Iceland who as a country of 300k reached the Euro 2016 quarter finals with their indoor football pitches and highly qualified coaches?
The missing factor in all these is sporting culture.
In sport we have the constant debate about who the greatest players of all time are. There are a few who are undisputed, like Wayne Gretzky. A Canadian ice hockey player who was so dominant that the records he set are regarded as unbeatable. But he was Canadian, and grew up in an area famous for ice hockey, with a hockey rink in his back garden. Pure randomness says there must be at least some people born with similar combinations of agile bodies and spatial awareness. But they haven't emerged because you need both that combination and exposure to ice hockey as a sport. How many Indian and Chinese Gretzkies have ended up living very normal lives? How much potential is wasted due to a lack of exposure to opportunity?
Or being the wrong gender. My cousin and I went on holiday together when about 16 years old, both football obsessed. One evening we were kicking a ball around after dinner when a girl of about 7 years old asked to join in. We said OK out of politeness assuming she would struggle to kick the ball back, only for her to be ridiculously good. She must have easily been in the top percentile for ability, and hopefully she continued to play for fun, but she would have still lacked the opportunity to turn her talent into a career.
This always makes me wonder why we have allowed such a narrow definition of education to take hold. The students I work with now thrived in that system but what I have also seen is that outside of that range of measurement their abilities are less obvious. Academic brilliance doesn't always translate into an eye for design, a steady hand, spatial awareness, empathy, or a charismatic personality.
So whilst I bemoan the waste of talent that comes from a lack of exposure to a wide range of sports I worry more that a lack of variety at school is wasting far more talent. The system at the moment is run by, and for, those who thrived in it. But the thing is these people would do well whatever the system, these are our youth footballers who make it anyway after just playing with their friends.
What I think people need is exposure and experience in as wide a range of activities, academic and vocational as possible. It may turn out the student in the bottom 30% academically is in the top 1% at something else. But unless they get a chance to try it they will never know. They will just be a Chinese Wayne Gretzky.
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