Coaching
Coach Development
The most important volunteers in youth sports are the coaches. The quality of coaching determines the quality of the athletic experience for our kids. A good coach not only teaches the game, but also focuses on the development of athletes as young men and women. Unfortunately, the negative impact of poor coaching can have long term effects on young athletes, both in terms of their continuing interest in the sport and maintaining an active lifestyle in general. We all have heard stories from families with bad experiences in youth sports.
In EAA we have hundreds of volunteer coaches. The majority of coaches are well intentioned and have a good grasp of the sport they are coaching—and if they don’t ample opportunity such as clinics and workshops exist to obtain technical sport-related coaching knowledge. However, most volunteer youth coaches do not possess training in how to coach kids from a motivational, psychological or developmental perspective. What is developmentally appropriate for a particular age? What are ways to foster a positive motivational climate that increases the likelihood of enjoyment and skill development? How should you give feedback? These are just a few of the issues that impact “how” you coach.
Given the importance of quality coaching, EAA has instituted a new coaching “certification” program for all EAA coaches. Beginning in the spring of 2011 EAA will ask that all of our head coaches for players 14 and under be certified, and we will strongly encourage that all assistant coaches be certified as well. So what is certification?
Certification results from participating in a 90 minute workshop that has been specifically developed for EAA by Nicole M. LaVoi, PhD, University of Minnesota. You may have heard of Dr. LaVoi – she has conducted several MN PLAYS™ workshops for EAA parents over the past couple years. Dr. LaVoi conducts research and is an expert in youth sports, coach and sport parent education, and girls’ and women in sports. She teaches sport psychology and sport sociology in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota and is the Associate Director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, and Co-Founder of the Minnesota Youth Sport Research Consortium. This coach workshop is not about the Xs and Os of a specific sport. Rather, it is about how to be a more effective coach, regardless of the sport or the level of the athletes you are coaching, whether you are new to coaching or have been doing it for many years.
EAA appreciates our volunteer coaches and we realize this is one more expectation that we are placing on volunteers. However, as association we believe it reasonable to ask our coaches to take 90 minutes to attend a workshop in an effort to improve the experience for our young athletes. We hope you will agree! After all, the kids depend on the coaches, and the parents entrust their kids to us. The importance of the player / coach relationship is critical to the overall experience.
Should you have any questions regarding the workshop or the certification expectation, please contact coaches@eaasports.org.
