Coaching

There was an excellent article in the Herald last week by Doug Gillon about coaching. He quite rightly says that the UK and Scottish Athletics gverning bodies have been guilty of neglecting the education of coaches for at least twenty years. As one who lived through it I an vouch that the coach education system in the recent past has been undirected, difficult to find out about and guilty of a serious dumbing down of the coaching qualification. In the late 80's and early 90's w had no fewer than sixteen coaches in the club: three Senior Coaches (now level 4),five Club Coaches (now level 3) and nine Assistant Club Coaches now level 2) plus many parents helping out when appropriate. As a result the club was flying - number sven in Scotland while VPAAC was fifteenth. But regardlss of the qualifications the status of coaches was higher - that's what made people want to take it up. Where did they come from? here were two main sources - athletes who wanted to teach other young people how to do their event, athletes whose competing days were over and parents. The two who led the superb women's and girl's league team were Emily Hardware (Lynn's Mum) and Agnes Gibson (Heather's Mum) and they were helped by Liz McAusland (my daughter), Julie Govan (High Jump coach Scott Govan's daughter), Lynn Cowan (Colin's sister) and Jenny Keir (their friend!) and every one of the five had their quafication - Emily and Agnes were what would now be level thre and the others level two. As far as the men were concerned the main coaches were Scott Govan (Mark and Donald's Dad) who coached High Jump and hurdles, myself, Bil Hislop (Sprints coach), Bobby Bell (throws), David Gibson (Pole vault), Hugh McArthur (everything but mainly middle distance) and several others, including Peter Halpin and Derek McGinley, making it one of the best coaching squads in the country. The question is could we do it again? The next post will address this one.