An exclusive report from Nic Barrow

This month the NZCBS, led by Mr Rob Elvin, hosted an IBSF Coaching Academy seminar in Auckland.

The ten day course, run by IBSF Head coach Nic Barrow, took 9 coaches through their paces at the Auckland Confederation of Billiard Sports club building that has 9 snooker tables and 8 pool tables.

The purpose of the course is ultimately to put New Zealand back on the international snooker map, with the focus on helping New Zealand juniors go through the IBSF Coaching Academy’s ‘How To Make A 100 Break’ programme. This seven level training system takes students from their red certificate all the way through to their black certificate where they will be at a standard to meet the requirement to make a 100 break and meet a whole host of other performance criteria.

This system helps juniors start from zero, and gives them the technical and psychological platform to go as far as they want to in the game.

Every level features exercises and drills in the areas of Technique, General Knowledge, Straight Potting, Break Building, Safety Play, Matchplay & Psychology and finally Black Ball skills.

This ground up approach suits the NZCBS’s objectives perfectly, which are to give the youth of New Zealand a positive activity to participate in that will teach them physical, mental and life skills... in addition of course to the ultimate objective of international snooker glory longer term.

Arthur King, Syd Walker, Nick Garforth, Scotty Friend, Gary Gillard, Gary Oliver, John Keatley, Wyn Belmont (father of 2009 IBSF Ladies Championship semi finalist Ramona Belmont) and Ramona’s brother Wayne completed the group of nine.

Every topic in snooker was covered during the course with technical information, psychology, motivation, and coaching intervention skills all featuring a prominent role.

Nic Barrow said: “ I felt very privileged to have been taken care of so well by Rob Elvin, his fellow board members and also all the coaches in the course who did absolutely everything to make the course went smoothly and more importantly accurately in all of their exam questions. There were certainly some very late nights studying put in by some of the coaches, and in the end our objective was reached that every coach on the course achieved 100% on the open examination tests.

I was very positively pleased with the depth of altruism shown amongst the coaches toward their country’s juniors. Having seen the quality of some of the juniors that our coaches had taught prior to the course, I know that there is a bright future for New Zealand snooker providing we all work the plan that we devised on the morning of day five.”