The PFA’s Footballers in Spotlight series continues with Auckland FC defender Francis de Vries who discusses his business Head Start Coaching which is helping young footballers not only grow on the field, but off it, by combining football and mindset training.
Auckland FC’s Francis de Vries’ impact on the field has been nothing short of profound throughout his first season in the A-League Men for the Premiers.
But now de Vries is hoping to have as big of an impact off the field through his business Head Start Coaching.
At Head Start, de Vries blends his two areas of expertise – football and psychology – into an innovative coaching method for young, aspiring footballers to not only become better players, but better people.
Ahead of their A-League Men finals series, which kicks off for the Black Knights next week, de Vries spoke with pfa.net.au to discuss his work off the field with Head Start and how he’s hoping to inspire the next generation of footballers.
Find out more about Head Start Coaching here.
Featured image: IMAGO / Action Plus
Q: Tell us a little bit about Head Start Coaching, Francis. How did it start and what was the inspiration behind it?
De Vries: “The business started when I was playing amateur football in New Zealand. After I came home from Sweden, I just had an ACL injury, so I was out of professional football and searching for something I could do next with my career. Now, obviously, Auckland has come up and I’m back playing professionally, but I found something that I had a massive passion for outside of football and that was developing young athletes and helping them with skills on the field but also skills off the field.
“It’s about empowering them to become resilient and confident in other areas of their life, using football as a tool. Once I found that, it made football so great, so worthwhile, so meaningful. That’s how it started.
“I started on the grass coaching local teams and it’s evolved into a football service, but also a mental skill service where we have a whole online platform with a software system, which clubs can use to educate their young players on skills such as motivation, resilience and confidence and ways that attract that and report that back to the players. The player then has this kind of personal guided journey to help them develop.”
Q: “How did you ingrain the mental side of it into the training?
De Vries: “It’s done in a few steps. The first step is education, so making the often difficult to understand psychology research accessible for a young player. So getting the insights, the key lessons from the research and actually giving that to a player in the way they can understand and implement.
“Once we’ve built that foundation of education, we do things such as personalised activities and challenges for the player. Some of these are on the field, but lots of them are off the field. The player is essentially building this whole repertoire of skills that they can draw upon at any time. And then they’re actively doing it, so we enable them to do it through the support that we give. We give guided challenges, we take the lessons from the mindset sessions that we do and we personalise them into online form activities.
“The player has access to that online platform 24/7. So if they’re not feeling confident for a game, for example, they can go back and look at what they’ve written down after our confidence workshop, and then there’ll be a little video there with some key steps and simple tools that they can use, and then they can access that any time really, and then give them a bit of a boost and hopefully remind them of the good things that they’d be progressing on.
“We then empower them to go out and apply these actions.”
Q: Tell us about your background with psychology. Is that something that you’ve studied in the background as well? Is that something that you studied as well or are currently studying?”
De Vries: “I went to the United States on a Scholarship to the college system. I studied psychology there, and I graduated with a Bachelor of Psychology, and currently I’m on the last part of my Masters. It’s a Masters of Integrative Health Science, so combining the physical and the mental ethics of a person’s wellbeing.”
Q: “Is becoming a psychologist is something that you’d like to do post football?”
De Vries: “Definitely in the future. I think it is important go through the whole education system.
“I’ve done three quarters of it, so I may as well finish it, and there’s so many good learnings, you get from this kind of academic study and that combined with the experience that I’ve had as a youth player, as a professional player and as a semi-professional player, you can kind of blend those two together and make it impactful for young players because you understand the kind of needs and gains that they can have from this, but you’ve also got the official education as well so you know what theories and what things are proven in the research.”
Q: “Where did your passion come from for psychology? Was that something that ever since you’re young that you’ve always had an interest in and something that you’ve wanted to pursue as something alongside being an athlete?”
De Vries: “It comes from when I was a youth player. I remember being around about the age of 12, where you’re just starting to go into high school and you’re starting to understand a lot more about yourself, about where you fit in socially and you start to get some clarity on your goals.
“So you start to realise what it actually means to want to be a professional footballer. I think most young players say this and don’t quite understand what it takes to get there and I had a bit of a breakthrough moment where I found, luckily in a library a book that was called ‘Mental Skills for Football‘. It was basic, it was early days in this field and it was just outlining simple tools for confidence, for preparation, for focus and I got hooked because it worked!
“I was at a stage where I was quite unsure of myself both as a football player and socially and it really helped me get this immediate feedback of the things that I was learning from psychology. I was implementing them on and off the field and they were making my life better, they were making my performance better, I was feeling better, I was a better teammate and so that’s how it started.”
Q: Do you feel that having a psychology background and gone into this space with Head Start has helped you with different challenges? Do you think it’s helped you when you faced different challenges on the field?
De Vries: “Without a doubt. If there’s one thing hopefully my career conveys is that perseverance is something that you can develop, that you work out and it comes through, and obviously understanding what it is, first and foremost, so getting educated on it, but then having the tools, the strategies, putting in the work off the field so that you can develop this, so that when the times get really hard, you feel like giving up both on and off the field, you know that you have something within you that will help you get through it.
“We (Auckland) just had this big success with the team and won the Premiership and everyone sees that moment. But those moments are made in all the times that no one sees and the only real thing you have apart from the support from the people around you are the tools and the mental strength that you build within yourself.
Q: “Where are you hoping to take your business next? Is there a goal that you have in mind?
De Vries: “My passion is still mostly in football, so obviously long term, I’d like Head Start to be available to all athletes. I’d like sport to be used as a tool to instil these important lessons for life, like good habits, having joy in sport, being active, being social, being a leader, and most of all, probably taking self ownership towards achieving your goals.”
