Talent Identification

Sporting Talent Identification

The Thinker.Jpg With playing sport of any kind we have all known of at lease one situation where your own sporting coach or local sporting authority has had the daunting task of selecting a special team of talented individuals to compete in a higher or advanced level of competition. The difficult part of selecting the advanced group is deciding which individual makes the team and which individual doesn't. How do you fairly and justly identify who will get into the selected team or training squad ? How can you remove the process of bias or randomness so that each individual in the team trying out for advancement gets a fair and just attempt to show their true abilities ? An example might be children trying to advance to a team to represent their city, state or country in a local team sports competition. There may be hundreds if not thousands of select age children entered into the one Talent Identification Series. Then you also have many different age groups for each separate Talent Identification Series. How can any one person,group or body truly evaluate an select an advance team from all the individuals who try out ? I intend to show you how to allocate human resources to over come this task. The Talent Identification System I intend to show you will greatly improve fairness and justification better than any other system I know of thus far.

For now I will use an example of children in a soccer competition trying out for local, state or country representation. It does not matter at any time the level of representation the individuals are trying out for, i.e. local, state or country. The fair and just system of talent identification I will use is one and the same regardless of the level or the advancement of competition.

Soccer Talent Identification Series

At my current location the children try out for the local Talent Identification Series(T.I.S.) Soccer competition every year. Each year there is always disappointment on the faces of the children who did not get selected into the training squad. Equally there is disappointment and some disgruntled parents who feel that their child had equal or better ability as some other children who did make the team. The responsibility of T.I.S. team selection always comes down to the hands of a few brave individuals. Why did some particular children get selected and not the others ? Did they show all of their true talent on the require day(s)? Was their true talent overlooked by the very busy selection authorities wading through teams of children to critique ? Did the selector or manager show bias or favouritism ?

Analysing The Current Problem :

The children do not get a full chance to show their true ability.
The children's true abilities are overlooked or missed by the talent selectors.
Outright accusations of Selector or Management bias or favouritism.

1. Showing Talent, Abilities And Skills.

In my location we over come the first part of the above T.I.S. problem by running a two day carnival over one weekend of the soccer season. The children from all the local cities and surrounding areas get to meet up and compete in a full two day carnival. While at the carnival the children will have the chance to play 5 or more full games over the two day weekend. The children will have every available opportunity to express their full talent an abilities to the selection panel of judges. With close on 100 children at the TIS competition it is very easy for one child to be lost or overlooked by the selection panel of judges. In the next pages I will discuss how the selection panel of judges can utilise extra available resources to overcome the problem of any talented child being missed or overlooked in the final selection.

2. Players Being Missed Or Overlooked.

There is now a different selection criterion format being put forward by the soccer T.I.S. authorities at present.The Talent Identification selectors themselves use a tabulated form with a number of selection criterion that each child must pass when competing in the two day T.I.S. carnival. A sample of a talent selectors form is presented in figure 2 below.

T.I.S. Selectors Critique Form

The selection criterion requires every child to pass through the evaluation form of figure 2. Each child is critique by the 3-4 selectors present at the T.I.S. carnival. When the carnival draws to a close the selectors compare notes and make adjustments an admissions; the final T.I.S. team/squad members are then announced. The problem still exists as to how a child is truly progressing through the carnival.

Do the selectors give a lot of attention or minimal attention to each child during his/her evaluation phase ? The highly talented children will always stand out in any competition. But what about the average children striving to match his/her own skills an abilities against other teams and players. A very strong team in any competition can make a very weak team look hopeless, so any chance of the players in the weaker team making the final selection is very minimal. The weak team players are therefore overlooked an not identified for their true talent. Most times it is the average comparable talent that loses out an are unable to develop their career prospects further. To over come this problem I recommend the T.I.S. enhancements and suggestions below.

**T.I.S. Selectors Critique Form**
Player Name	Releasing The Ball 1-5	Attacking The Ball 1-5	Skills With The Ball 1-5	Run With The Ball 1-5	Striking The Ball 1-5	Game Attitude 1-5	Team Attitude 1-5	Total 35
Joe Moe	1	4	3	3	3	5	5	26/35
Chris Clay	3	3	3	3	3	4	5	24/35
Ken Dun	4	4	4	4	4	5	2	27/35

3. Removing Bias and Favouritism.

Instead of having one selector critique 100 (32 per match) or more children during the carnival, we could utilise the available human resources at the carnival an assign 30-40 individual selectors to do the job instead. Yes I recommend each child playing on the field at that time have his or her very own personal selector who will evaluate his/her every move throughout the two day carnival. How can this work you might say. How can an ordinary person become competent an do the job that a T.I.S. selector has taken years to develop? The answer lies in giving an ordinary person the resources to be able to accomplish the task. We are not trying to remove the T.I.S. selector or remove them from the valuable job that they currently do. We are merely trying to aid them further with more readily available information that they can use immediately. This information can further aid the selectors and parents in removing any doubts about personal bias or player favouritism.

Helping The T.I.S. Selectors

Each team in a game of soccer has 11 players on the field, an a maximum of 5 reserve players sitting on the bench. That gives us a total of 32 players to monitor for their skills an abilities during each game played. There is usually 3-4 selectors who pass critique on each player during each game. This in my opinion allows for an unacceptable ratio of around one selector to watch over 10 players for every game played. In fact the ratio is much worse, as each selector watches over all players during every game. It is very easy for a selector to become tied and fatigued long before the carnival is completed. And as I stated before, it is very easy for stronger teams to power over weaker teams in a competition.

Thus creating a situation where the weak team talented members are overlooked by the T.I.S. managers for more serious selection. To give every child an equal fair an just opportunity to make the T.I.S. selection squad, we should allocate a competent an fresh person for each individual child playing on the field during the current game. How do you allocate human resources to monitor every child on the field ?

Enlisting Competent People As Statistics Personnel

Before commencement of the T.I.S. carnival it would be required to seek out an enlist 30-40 competent people who would like to become statistics coordinators. I will call these separate individual coordinators statistics personnel. The stat's personnel assigned to each child will collect statistics information about one child only during each game. After each an every game all stat's personnel will hand in the players stat's card to the T.I.S. central manager so they can view all the information that the stat's personnel have gathered about each child. The T.I.S selector can then make a valued judgment about how the child is truly progressing throughout the T.I.S.carnival. If a child is gathering above average statistics during the carnival than the T.I.S selector(s) can take greater attention of the players abilities, and/or included them in the final decision making process for selection into the T.I.S. squad. Each individual statistics coordinator will only ever monitor one child on the field at any one time. He/she will therefore be able to gather the information necessary to give the average ability children a chance to show their skills and/or game prowess. All stat's information gathered will go to the central T.I.S.selectors for their final scrutiny and/or adjustment. Important, to remove all bias, each separate stat's coordinator will be assigned to a neutral team player.

Coordinating Statistics Personnel.

In reality you would not need to engage the listing of 100+ individual personnel for each child of the T.I.S. competition. At most you would only require to enlist the help of 30-40 competent people who are able to watch a game and fill out the simple stat's card for each child on the field at that time. To eliminate favouritism, bias or corruption you would need to be sure that parents, close friends or team parents do not mark their friends or their own child's statistics card. To over come this problem it would be necessary to give the stat's personnel a completely different card to fill out we each new game. This further ensures that stat's personnel could never develop bias, favouritism or corruption toward a particular player. To further aid in fair selections stronger teams could be given a stat's handicap when playing against weaker teams.

This ensures the individual stat's of each player is relatively balanced across the two currently competing teams.

The only short coming with enlisting statistics personnel to help out is that people be present for all games. It would not be to difficult to have extra statistic's personnel enlisted in case there is a stat's person absent for any particular game

What statistics would the stat's coordinator collect during the game ?

The stat's personnel would be required to collect simple pen marks on the card during the game. The pen strokes would be tallied and written down on the cards total at the end of the carnival. Alternatively the pen marks can be written to a second piece of paper; tallied and transferred to the stat's card at the end of the current game.

Team: Bilo No: 3 Name: Joe Moe
Game	Attacking	Defending	Ball Won	Passing	Running	Attitude	Goals
1	111	11	111	111	1		1
2	11111	11	1111	1	111	5	1
3	11	11	1	11	1	5
4	1111	111	11	11111	1111	5
5	1111	11111	11	11	1		1
Totals	18	14	12	13	10	15/25	3

Team: Bilo No: 3 Name: Joe Moe
Game	Advances in Play	Tackles/ Defence	Passing	Overall Rating
1	111	11	111	2
2	11111	11	1	5
3	11	11	11	3
4	1111	111	11111	5
5	1111	11111	11	5
Totals	18	14	13	20/25

The statistics information compiled on the player stat's card can range from simple to advanced information. You should try to keep the information concise and simple so that each individual stat's coordinators can readily identify with the task at hand. If you make the card to difficult to understand then you will be required to teach your stat's personnel prior to commencement of any T.I.S. carnival. Depending on what information the T.I.S. selector is requiring, you may have either detailed information as in the stat's card of figure 3, or more general information as in the simplified stat's card of figure 4. Either way any information presented to the T.I.S. management could be valuable in their final decision.

Making All Statistics Available

The benefit of using the statistics card system should be more than obvious to those reading this document. Once the statistics are correlated into the T.I.S. central body, people can readily query any discrepancies they may have with regard to the information about their child. The T.I.S. selectors can then feel much more confident about their final decision as the information was gathered through numerous totally neutral non-bias statistics personnel. Using stat's personnel removes the heavy responsibility of selecting individual players out of the hands of the overly worked T.I.S. selectors an into the hands of many separate individuals.

If a parent or player where then to contest why their child had not made the final selected squad, then the players own individual statistics could be presented as evidence to support the T.I.S. selectors final decision. The T.I.S. manager need only argue the fact that a possible 30-40 anonymous non-bias people took part in stat's gathering process. Stat's information gathered an used in this way will remove any doubts about bias or favouritism, and give all players a fair an just chance at all possible selection, to enable them to advance their sporting career....

Key Points

	Assign statistics cards to each individual player.
	Allocate 30-40 statistics personnel to watch each game.
	Allocate a different stat's cards to stat's personnel each game.
	Correlate all stat's information during the carnival.
	Make all stat's information available to any personal query.