Arizona recently became the fifth state in the country to require all high school coaches, including faculty, to take and pass a coaching class.
With this move, Arizona joins California, Massachusetts, Oregon and Rhode Island in requiring this certification.
The NFHS Fundamentals of Coaching course, which was started in January 2007 as the signature course of the NFHS Coach Education Program, address the following subjects: educational athletics and the role of the coach, the coach as a manager, the coach as a teacher, the coach and interpersonal skills, and the coach and physical conditioning.
In Illinois, only non-faculty coaches are required to take a class called the ASEP. Should the IHSA become the sixth state to require this training of all coaches?
IHSA assistant executive director Ron McGraw told The Heat Index in an email "At this time the membership seems content with the provisions of by-law 2.070, and there is absolutely no discussion about requiring all IHSA coaches to become ASEP certified."
The program includes 11 hours of classroom instruction in Coaching Principles and Sport First Aid. ...Coaching Principles has been revised to include updated information and new chapters on coaching for character, coaching diverse athletes, using the games approach to coaching, teaching tactical skills, training for muscular and energy fitness and drugs and sport. The Sport First Aid course presents sport first aid information in a more logical format, provide injury protocols for over 130 injuries and present new information on topics such as blood-borne pathogens and heat illness.
Certified teachers in Illinois are not required to take this type of class to become a coach. Is the IHSA assuming that being a teacher means you have all these skills already? The IHSA is certainly assuming that non-faculty applicants lack these qualities, since IHSA by-law 2.070 requires them to take a class to gain them.
If the membership of the IHSA decides that by-law 2.070 should be changed to require all coaches get certified, McGraw said "there is a mechanism in place to address the issue."
McGraw also added a pragmatic argument against requiring the classes. Why make it more difficult for the principals and ADs?
"Adding an additional certification requirement would do nothing positive to help convince those experienced teacher / coaches to remain in a school's athletic programs," McGraw wrote.
I enjoy pragmatism as much as the next guy, probably more, but I also enjoy a level playing field. The answer for how to even things up isn't getting rid of the requirement for non-faculty coaches.
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