Coach Education Changes in 2010

FFSW has identified Coach Education as a number one priority for 2010 and will soon be offering dates, venues and times for coach education during the 2010 pre-season.  You can register your interest, or keep your eye on the Web as these will be posted as soon as we can confirm details.

Norm Boardman, FFA’s National Community Coach Education Manager, recently announced that the structure of Coach Accreditations would soon be changing for the better.

Gone will be the usual mandatory progression from Junior to Youth and Senior coaching levels requiring you complete one before embarking on the next in the road to the higher or older age group coaching. 

Norm explained that each of the courses would be broken down into two certificate stages giving coaches more practical hands on educational experiences.  Both stages will be shorter in duration making them much more accessible to our volunteers in terms of time management and easier to schedule.

One or both certificates may be attended, the choice is with the coach and unless you are keen to have your official accreditation you do not need to attend the assessment session component, just take with you all of your gained practical knowledge and skills and get coaching.

There will be no need for unaccredited coaches working with senior players to work their way through the coaching school ranks, you can go straight to the Senior Certificate One, giving all you need to get started and coaching your senior team.

After consultation with Associations, FFSW will also be looking at programming specific coaching courses aimed at giving more experienced coaches knowledge on particular areas ie filling in the gaps to truly maximise coach education time.  These will also be opportunities to ensure that our experienced coaches are up to speed with the new FFA curriculum and best coaching practises.

The FFA has also launched a new online coaching tool - s2s (Secrets to Sports).  This exciting tool can be used to create and record your training sessions from predefined drills and session plans and is itemised into the defined coaching and skill categories required for player development and is fully aligned with FFA and world best practise coaching.

For those of you with the knowledge you are also able to use this system to create your own drill sequences, creating not only a 2D diagram to print out and take to the training field but it will also produce a 3D video to show your players who it works in action – sweet !!

It is my understanding that coaches undertaking coaching accreditation in 2010 will be given access to the new system with all identified coaches (ie previously accredited with FFA coach ID’s) rolled out over the course of the year.

An exciting year ahead for coaches in the SW with the new online coaching tools, coach-friendly educational sessions and establishment of our first FFSW Coaches Hub we believe we are set to achieve great outcomes in 2010 and beyond ...