Seminar focuses on youth sports

Who: Coaches
Age: Various
What: Making the Youth Sports Experience Better

This article isn't about the youth and what their doing, but it is about what Coaches are doing to make Youth Sports experience even better. Coaches gathered for this seminar getting to learn how to better enrich the Student-Athlete experience--which I think is vital for our youths of today and thought that it would be a little different change of pace BIY article. This article can be found at The Times Tribune.


Seminar focuses on youth sports
BY ASHLEY TEATUM / SPECIAL TO THE TIMES-TRIBUNE
05/21/2008

With the motto " Helping Coaches, Helping Kids," the Joe Bocchicchio Foundation, formed at The University of Scranton, hopes to better edu­cate coaches to serve their stu­dent athletes.

"The foundation is our ini­tiative to promote coaching education to all levels, particu­larly the youth sports level," explained Dr. Jack O'Malley, professor of sports psychology at the university.

With this in mind, O'Malley organized Tuesday's seminar in Brennan Hall at the Univer­sity of Scranton.

There, several faculty mem­bers and representatives dis­cussed the benefits of the involvement of the American Sport Education Program ( ASEP) for high school sports and youth sports in Northeast­ern Pennsylvania.

Simultaneously, on another level of Brennan Hall, coaches trained for eight hours to receive coaching certification.

ASEP provides classroom workshops and training for those who wish to coach throughout the United States. O'Malley and the university are helping to "get the ball rolling" in Pennsylvania's District 2.

"Our dream is to ask people to be trained to be ASEP instructors and be volunteer teachers," O'Malley said. " We're not addressing a prob­lem. The goal is to do this to enrich the student-athlete expe­rience as much as possible, to make the most positive stu­dent- athlete experience possi­ble. It's not like we have all these problems we have to solve. That's not the perspec­tive."

O'Malley invited superinten­dents and other administrators from area high schools, includ­ing Pam Murray, principal of Abington Heights High School, to discuss ways to implement the program within the region. " We're looking to better serve our student- athletes," Murray said. " The program would be a tool in which we could educate our coaches with the philosophy, again, to put student athletes first, wining second, and to better serve our student-athletes."

An administrator and the ath­letic director from Abington Heights received the training Tuesday as well. Murray said they would "go back and discuss the information" once training and the seminar had ended.

ASEP focuses not just on the " x's and o's" of coaching, explained Robert Buckanav­age, the executive director of the Pennsylvania State Athlet­ic Directors Association.

"We all believe that if you better prepare your coaches, you're going to have a better opportunity that the student will have a positive sports expe­rience," Buckanavage said. " It's about training, educating and learning."

The five aspects of the pro­gram, he continued, include coaching principles, psycholo­gy, pedagogy, training princi­ples, and risk management, like first aid and AED operation.

"If ( coaches) learn those things, they're building a good foundation," Buckanavage add­ed.

Several superintendents expressed concern about the amount of time or the cost that such a program would require. According to Buckanavage and Jerry Reeder, a national pro­gram consultant for ASEP, the cost for the program would be $ 60 a coach. As compared to some clinics that require upward of $ 300, O'Malley add­ed, this inconvenience is mini­mal.

ASEP also offers an online course for training to be com­pleted at a coach's own leisure. That option eradicates the face- to- face instruction that Reeder felt was necessary for training. In workshops, veter­an coaches, new coaches and other staff members interact with one another.

"That's the one thing you cannot duplicate in an online course," Reeder said.

Other University staff mem­bers started to build that strong foundation on the first floor of Brennan Hall. University of Scranton women's basketball coach Mike Strong, for example, aided in the discussion and led training for the coaches receiv­ing certification.

"The more we get together, the more we share," Strong said. " It's not like one person knows more than someone else. It's all about giving back to your sport. It's this Jesuit school: It not only personifies, but it promotes this."

ASEP, founded by Rainer Mar­tens in 1981, believes that coach­es hold the key to making the sports experience a positive one for student athletes. The Joe Bocchicchio Foundation and District 2 schools are looking into how to continue this mis­sion through its sports programs in the coming school year.

"This region has a real dis­tinct opportunity to make a dif­ference," Buckanavage said. " It's going to be different, but it'll be very special. Every region has traditions. This northeast region has deep tra­ditions in sport, and the com­munity identifies with that."