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Jul 17

Longitudinal Study on UK Sport Coaches

This Sport Coach UK report is based on a unique four-year study of coaches in the United Kingdom. Over the past four years, 400 coaches completed a survey, providing details on their coaching practice, professional development and motivations. The data was used by UK coaching leadership to better understand coaches and track their changes over time. The coaches in this study represent a distinct section of the national UK coaching population. workforce.  Below are six points to take away from this report:

  1. Coaches play a vital role in participation. The 417 coaches in this study alone provided coaching to over 13,000 participants. As club membership increased, it was often these coaches who stepped in to fill the coaching gaps.
  2. Although coaches often have very practical reasons for starting coaching (eg there was no one else available to do it), as they develop, they experience a range of different and more personal benefits. There is the satisfaction that comes from seeing athletes develop and a feeling of giving something back to the sport/club/community.
  3. Coaching allows people to stay involved in their sport. It provides a social interaction with players and, for some, provides a continuing involvement in the competitive element of sport.
  4. As coaches gain more experience, they start to supplement their technical and tactical knowledge with more interpersonal and reflection skills. There is also a drift towards more informal learning sources, which reflects the different knowledge being sought.
  5. There is a depressing trend in coaches feeling less supported by their governing body of sport and national partners. While the majority still feel supported, if this trend is allowed to continue, we will reach a stage where, by the end of what has been called a decade of sport, less than half of experienced, qualified coaches feel supported.
  6. The decision to stop coaching is rarely planned in advance. Eight out of 10 coaches who stop coaching did not intend to do so the previous year.

While this is a study of coaches in the UK, it does beg the question, why not a similar study here in the US?  We have an estimated 6-7 million men and women coaching at all levels of sport and we basically do not know much about them.

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