Intermediate Athletics Leadership

Striving to Be the Leader in Me

Course Description

The Intermediate Athletics Leadership courses at OELC have a focus on developing students’ leadership skills through the medium of athletics. The ideal candidate is one who has demonstrated leadership potential or is eager to develop his or her emergent leadership skills. The course program is divided into three major areas: Leadership Development sessions; Focus Groups and Activity Sessions. Practical application of such a framework includes intramural programming; school-wide activity days, spirit day functions and programming; school and community student/athletic councils; and orientation days, to name but a few. Following successful course completion the student will have the skills to be successful in coordinating and facilitating any of the above leadership opportunities.

Leadership Development

  • Through a series of unique activities, students explore different leadership styles and how each complements the success of a team.
  • Specific leadership development sessions give students opportunities to explore various components of leadership such as: effective communication, group dynamics, problem-solving, organizational skills, and risk-taking in a non-threatening and encouraging environment and through well-planned experiential learning activities.
  • Students will demonstrate an increased willingness to assume leadership and responsibility as they gain an increased confidence in their ability to tackle realistic leadership challenges.

Focus Groups

  • Our staff create and facilitate diverse, inclusive and activity-based “break-out sessions” that effectively build and enhance student leadership qualities in a variety of contexts. This includes communication, inclusiveness, goal setting, world issues, social justice and conflict resolution.  There are many variations on these themes depending on the course focus and vision of individual course directors.
  • The premise of these “break-out sessions” is for the emerging leader to see the importance of “being the change he or she wishes to be in the world”.
  • Students learn how to make effective change in their schools and communities using their newly acquired leadership skills.

Activity Sessions

  • Students are involved in team and individual sports, low ropes challenges, and intramural/tournament organizational sessions. These activities are intended to provide students with leadership opportunities through peer support, skill development, and reflection on instructional and team-building techniques with the goal of gaining confidence to apply some of these strategies within their own school/community-based leadership context.
  • Students will engage in tasks and challenges that have to be resolved by a group effort. By working together in a collaborative and team building manner, individual student leaders learn experientially and demonstrate specific behaviours of effecting interpersonal relations with regard to the leadership development objectives.
  • Students will learn the balance of cooperation and competition in completing group tasks. The importance of cooperation, cohesiveness and effective group functioning will be realized.