The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

AFTER a successful hosting of their first Level One Certification Course overseas last November, the United States of American Track and Field (USATF) will be reuniting with the Bahamas Association of Athletic Coaches (BAAC) for their second course next week.

The date is September 19-21 and the venue will be the Government High School Library.

BAAC president Curtis Pride said if the numbers were any indication last year when they had a total of 96 participants, they are anticipating that the numbers will increase this year because there were some persons who missed out on the opportunity to attend.

“From the onset, when the current executive board of the coaches association had our initial meeting and wrote our plan, one of the things that we thought was important was to educate coaches to make education more accessible for our coaches,” Pride said. “We targeted school coaches, physical education teachers because when we looked back at our history at CARIFTA, we had our best years when we had active school systems.

“We’ve made some changes from that and now we have a lot of clubs. But the clubs are not easily accessible by the majority of the students. To go to a club practice, you have to go to a specific location. Parents have to have a ride and you have to pay to join, so it’s not just accessible for the grassroot students. So we thought it necessary to make education accessible to coaches and school coaches with the hope that they can inspire more physical education teachers to manage their programmes.”

Pride, a product of the grassroot segment of our society, said gone are the days when physical education teachers just try to assemble their teams in time to compete on the school meets. If they can attract more students to train and compete for their schools, Pride said they can produce more athletes to perform at a higher level, which will enable everybody to benefit from the programme.

“It’s a very important part of our overall development of programmes within our coaches association,” Pride said. “Hopefully, it will manifest in a much stronger junior progamme in years to come.”

More than half of last year’s participants were from the educational system and, in particular, the high schools. But Pride said they were advised that the primary schools were left out and so they wanted to make sure that when they bring the course back, they would include the primary schools.

“When we contacted the USATF, they were so impressed with the first course that they have agreed to come back for the second one,” Pride said. “Our target is actually 50 persons, but if things develop the way we see it is starting to, then we will have another big course.

“We are made to understand that there are 43 primary school teachers alone that is being supported by the Ministry of Education to take the course. They still have to complete the registration to be a part of it. Plus, there are some more coaches from the high schools, who didn’t participate last year, that are trying to get in there also.”

Also, there are four persons, including three Americans, who have signed up online who wish to come in to participate in the course.

If the interest is there, Pride said the Bahamas could end up being a venue for the hosting of a course every two years.

While renowned Loren Seagrave, the director of speed and movement at the IMG Academy and Dr Larry Judge, associate professor of physical education and coordinator of the Graduate Athletic Coaching Education Programme at Ball State University, will be returning, joined by Scott Christenson, a distance running specialist.

For the first time, Bahamian Peter Pratt, the first lecturer for the USATF, will be a co-director with Seagrave and will also serve as a lecturer for the course in jumps. Seagrave will lecture on the sprints, while Judge will deal with the throws.

Interested persons can still sign up on the USATF website or with the BAAC.

The USATF course, according to Pride, does not replace the IAAF course. Instead, it provides an opportunity for coaches to get their feet wet.

“Both systems prepare you equally to coach, so it becomes a matter of choice,” Pride said. “You can choose to go the USAFT route or use the IAAF route. The choice should be based on what your aspiration is as a coach. If you want to coach just junior athletes at the school level, the USATF is a great way to go.

“If you want to become an Olympic coach, then you may want to take the IAAF route because the Olympic Committee looks at the IAAF as the certification. We have many Bahamians who are IAAF level five coaches, but never did an IAAF level one or two or three course, but were given equivalency once they would have reached a certain level in the USATF.”