Georgia Taps Maine Model for Coaching Education Text
Contact: Kay Hyatt @ (207) 581-2761
ORONO, Maine — More than 40 states are looking to Maine as a model for steering local sports reform, but Georgia is the first to make Sports Done Right part of its official process for training community coaches. The Georgia High School Association (GHSA) recently adopted the University of Maine guide for defining and shaping healthy interscholastic and youth sports as a textbook for its coaching eligibility program.
Beginning this summer, the GHSA, which oversees high school athletics in the Peach state, will use Sports Done Right: A Call to Action on Behalf of Maine Student-Athletes as a textbook to supplement Coaching Principles, one of two required courses for individuals seeking community coaching — or non-faculty — certification.
“We wanted the best possible information on a practical level to benefit our coaches,” says Ralph Swearngin, GHSA executive director. “There’s absolutely no fat in Sports Done Right,” he says. “Every paragraph is solid data.”
The GHSA has conducted a training program for non-faculty coaches since the early 1990’s and was in the process of creating a new curriculum last fall when members of the revision panel learned about the UMaine report, which was issued in January 2005. “We evaluated it and felt it was the best for us,” Swearngin says.
Other publications considered as supplementary texts were more like graduate-level, theory-heavy materials, according to Swearngin. However, Sports Done Right was different. “We didn’t have to wade through a lot of theory,” he says. “The blending of theory and practice was very succinct.”
Swearngin also notes that the report’s core principles and practices best reflect the association’s own values and beliefs about the qualities coaches need to take into the field and work effectively with adolescents.
Crafted by a statewide Select Panel, the Maine report defines healthy interscholastic sports, promotes competition without conflict, and makes recommendations for shaping the best possible learning environment for student-athletes. The document is unprecedented in its reliance on the voices of student-athletes to examine problems and solutions.
Implementation of Sports Done Right by Maine schools and communities is spearheaded by the Maine Center for Sport and Coaching (MCSC) at the University of Maine. The MCSC, in cooperation with the Maine Principals’ Association, also runs an on-line course for Maine coaching eligibility.
In Georgia, an average of 1,000 participants take the community coaching eligibility course each year, and the GHSA has entered an agreement with the MCSC to purchase 2,000 copies of the report. Instructors will use the Maine report at training sites throughout Georgia and include questions from Sports Done Right in the eligibility exam.
The use of the Maine report as a textbook in a statewide coaching education program has tremendous implications, according to MCSC director Karen Brown. “Georgia’s view of Sports Done Right as a practical approach to improving coaching education and the sports experience will continue to increase our momentum,” she says.
The Select Panel’s hope was to develop a tool that could be used as a model in Maine as well as nationally, Brown notes. The relationship with the Georgia High School Association, she says, speaks to the quality and scope of the panel’s work and expands the voice of Maine student-athletes who were key in shaping the report.
In addition to 12 school pilot sites working to implement the initiative, more than 250 Maine communities have participated in training and/or started community conversations around Sports Done Right. Sport and school leaders in more than 40 states as well as Canada and the United Kingdom have requested the report and various tools developed to help schools assess and reform their sports programs.
(Media note: Ralph Swearngin, executive director of the Georgia High School Association in Thomaston, GA, can be reached at 706-647-7473; res@ghsa.net.