Catching up on the interesting youth sports articles that I am finding out on the web and in the general media. I have been holding on to this one for some time; regarding insufficiently trained coaches who may be putting youth athletes at risk.
Granted this article (
http://www.prweb.com/releases/sports/coaching/prweb907124.htm) is more of a PR piece than a news item but some fo the concepts and statistics are interesting anyway. The American Coaching Academy (
http://www.americancoachingacademy.com) [Free Plug] offers new online certification programs for youth sports coaches so that they can learn the required knowledge and skills from their home or office computer. There are 3.5 million youth sport coaches in the US and many have little or no training in coaching.
The goal of the ACA is to make sure that coaches understand and can fulfill their roles as mentors, motivators, teacher, leader, medic and disciplinarian all while ensuring that the risk of physical injury is minimized.
