Closing the Coaching Gap

Grassroots athletics is limited by coaching capacity rather than by information. A club with 120 members and eight active coaches cannot individualise, cannot review every athlete, and cannot afford the specialist support that professional sport takes for granted. The coaches carrying that load are also, in most cases, doing it for nothing, in the evenings, around work. This paper argues that responsible artificial intelligence has a real and comparatively modest role in that setting. It can draft, differentiate, remember, communicate and prompt reflection, releasing coaching attention for the part that only a person can do. It also argues, at length, that several things technology could easily be pointed at in youth sport should be refused outright, including anything that selects, ranks, interprets pain, or communicates with a child without an adult in the loop.