snip general consensus

We do need to encourage people to push their envelope, but we need to
be very careful not to draw people into water grades and experiences
that they are not mentally ready for.

Hmmm - I think that has considerable validitiy, but there is a difference
between setting someone up to challenge their ability and knowing that there
is a nice,safe pool to collect the bits in and that there is little
entrapment risk and the situation where a mistake will result in someone
getting a serious fright and /or being put into a position where they are at
real risk.

Again, the good coach will assess this - in much the same way that a Scouter
will assess the degree of risk and challenge a child is ready for.

One of the problems is that the good coach may well not have the depth
of knowledge of the candidates to make that decision. The problem lies
not in the technical dificulty of the water being paddled, but rather
on the understanding of the mental state of the paddler. A paddler may
well be capable of paddling, and we may know that they can safey carry
out a task, but in their mind they have the wrong attitude and they
then could be in danger of failing to complete through lack of
commitment to the action.

I became aware of this when I nearly lost a 2 Star candidate when ,
after a year of paddling and capsizing and many successful attempts at
Eskimo rescues we were doing a capsize and swim to shore. She
hesitated, went over, and we waited for her to pop up beside the
boat... and waited. I was charging towards her when there was a great
sucking sound and a pop and she surfaced gasping for air.

She had gone over, panicked, failed to even try and find the grab on
her spray deck and as it was a tight fit she couldn't just pop it off
by pushing against it.

It turned out that she had always gone through the motions of looking
for the grab but had always been too panicky and had just pushed
herself out of the boat. Now none of us had realised this. We made the
assumption that she was doing it okay and was perfectly happy with the
action. We were wrong. As a result we pressed her to push her envelope
without correctly assesing her state of mind or her ability to
correctly complete the capsize drill - which she had "faked" for over
a year - and had fooled several coaches into thinking she was doing it
right.

We have now changed our approach to this candidate, and also to the
way in which we go through the capsize drill to make sure this does
not happen again.


Ewan Scott
http://www.claytonwestscouts.org.uk