Think back to when you played youth sports and the coaches you had. Chances are that those coaches learned how to coach from the coaches they had. They were simply repeating the behaviors they saw modeled for them. Maybe if you had that one great coach who changed your life for the better. But what if we were able to make it so that “great coaching,” wasn’t a pivotal once in a lifetime fluke, but the norm? To do that we have to get serious about coach training.
If you went through similar coaching certification course as I did, it might have been a one-day affair. Maybe you went through some drills to use at practice, received a pamphlet, and went home after lunch, not remembering much of what you learned that day. And the rest of the season you had to wing it, and draw upon what you hoped would work.
Coach training is a crucial part in changing the narrative around youth sports. After all, if you change the coaches you literally change the game. But if it is going to have an impact, it has to be intentional. And maybe it is going to have to be even more labor and time intensive. To be clear this post is to just to get us thinking about this process. I don’t have great advice to offer and am certainly not here to promote a particular coach training course. I just want to get more gears turning about how we could be more intentional about preparing the people who potentially have a huge (positive/negative) impact on our children and young people? If given the job, what would you do to make sure every coach is a great coach?
The Sideline Fix 
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