End-of-season review – a forecast for the season ahead

The end of the season is a good time to take a well-deserved rest, but it’s also a good time to take stock of the past season and identify areas for improvement for next year (or next season).

This review will help you to improve next season by taking everything you’ve learned from this season. On the other hand, without it, you risk ending next season in the same position as you are now. That’s why technology can be so useful in sport, to gather as much data as possible that can be compared from one year to the next.

If you change nothing, nothing will change. So how do you make a good season review?

Before the start of the season, you’ve probably set some goals for the end of the season. Now that you have, it’s time to ask yourself a few questions:

• What goals did you achieve?
• What are the reasons for not achieving certain objectives?

The purpose of these questions is not to look back on what didn’t go well in a negative way, or to blame the players, but rather to determine how to improve certain aspects of the organization for next season. So, when you’re checking whether or not objectives were achieved, try to see what was achieved despite all the difficulties experienced, or try to find the reasons and blockers that prevented you from achieving your objectives. The more you focus on the positive side of things, the more motivated you’ll be to do better next time.

At this stage, give your managers, parents, players and other volunteers involved in your team suggestions, advice, ideas and guidance on how to improve in the future. Effective communication within the club is the best way to achieve your goals.

As a coach, you need to keep track of each player’s performance throughout the season. At the end-of-season review, you can look at the information you’ve noted, and discuss areas for improvement for each player. This is also an opportunity to propose specialized training programs for each player during your sport’s off-season.

In doing so, never refer to how last season could have been better if they had done better in this or that aspect. Note that sports skills develop gradually over the course of each season. The only problem you can address directly is when you see that some players aren’t improving at all. In this case, you should consider talking to them individually rather than in front of the group, so as not to intimidate them.

What’s a team without its players? It’s very important to involve the players in the end-of-season review, so that you can get their opinion too. Here are a few questions you can ask them:

• What have you learned this season?
• What specific skills would you like to work on?
• How have you improved/become a better athlete compared to another season?
• Did your performance live up to your expectations?

By asking your players such questions, you allow them to introspect, to express themselves freely and you strengthen your coach-athlete relationship, which is very important for the team’s overall performance.

The end-of-season review is a good time to analyze failures and areas for improvement, but we can sometimes get into a negative loop and forget to celebrate successes and victories. Celebrating successes is just as important as acknowledging failures, as it serves to highlight the efforts made by the team and boosts player motivation. By focusing on what has worked, the team can draw inspiration from its past successes to continue progressing and reach new heights in the following season.

Achievements are lessons and proof that the team possesses skills and qualities that can be exploited to maintain positive momentum and build a promising sporting future. In this way, the end-of-season review proves to be a subtle balance between constructive introspection and recognition of successes, fostering a healthy and fulfilling evolution for the team.

The end of the season also means planning for next season. To do this, an important step not to be neglected is to identify the objectives to be achieved next season. These can be divided into short-, medium- and long-term objectives, but they absolutely must be SMART objectives: Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic, and above all Temporal. This will help you to determine what you want to achieve in different periods, without going overboard.

Tip: While ambition is important, it’s important to set limits when it’s detrimental to your players’ health. In other words, don’t set goals that are too ambitious, so as not to overload the season and force players to give more than they can. Make sure you have two or three objectives to reach from the beginning to the end of the season. In case you manage to reach them faster than you planned, you can afford to work on another goal.

And that’s it! When taking stock at the end of the season, make sure it’s a forecast for next season’s success.