2009 Program News
9/24/09: Coaches Prepare for Apprenticeships
After two weeks of classes, the coaches of ICECP are ready to hit the field, track, court, mat or wherever else their sport is played. The first module concludes on Friday and soon after, each coach will head out to a sport-specific apprenticeship site.
Starting next week, they will shadow, observe and interact with coaches from national governing bodies, university athletic teams or elite sport clubs in each of their respective sports.
The apprenticeship gets the coaches away from the theory and into the practice. They will have the opportunity to share and learn new methods and applied technologies being utilized in their sport from the top coaches and trainers in the country. They will acquire knowledge and information that can be shared upon returning to their homelands to further develop their sport.
Coaches will travel to one of 13 sites based on their sport. With the exception of one (skiing), all of the apprenticeship sites are located in the US. They include elite athletic clubs, Division I collegiate programs and US Olympic training centers.
The basketball coaches are traveling to Philadelphia. They will observe practices and workouts, interact with coaches and talk to players from six collegiate programs, including St. Joseph’s University, Drexel, Villanova, UPenn, La Salle and Temple. They will also attend Philadelphia 76ers training camp sessions and observe preseason workouts at Delaware.
Coaches headed to Philly include Sid Guzman (Guam), Haili Ripley (American Samoa), Misshame Anareme (Togo), Harun Sesay (Sierra Leone) and Rota Onorio (Kiribati).
The swimming coaches are staying close to Delaware, too. They will complete their apprenticeship at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club (NBAC) in Baltimore. The NBAC is run by Bob Bowman, who had six swimmers compete in the Beijing Olympics, including Michael Phelps. Swimmers coached by Bowman have set 34 world records and over 50 American records.
Isabelle Zarb (Malta), Papadopolous Anastasios (Greece), Majid Waseem (Pakistan) and Adam Mohamed (Maldives) are taking the trip to see how Bowman creates elites swimmers.
The judo coaches are packing their suntan lotion and shipping off to Coral Springs, FL, to visit the North Miami Judo Training Center. North Miami is also the home of the USA Judo training center. Coaches making the trip south include Ian Weithers (Barbados), Tatenda Guta (Zimbabwe), Nabil Elalem (Libya) and Igor Paskoski (Macedonia).
Penn State will host the track and field coaches. The Division I powerhouse, which is hosting the men’s indoor championships this year, will welcome Ernesto Selva (El Salvador), Gabrielli Qoro (Fiji) and Denise Williams (Grenada).
The archery coaches will head west and visit two sites. Their first stop is at the US Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA. Next, they will head to Colorado Springs to attend an archery course at the USOC headquarters.Yu-Chiao Hsu (Taiwan), Edward Ramesar (Trinidad and Tobago) and Badamkhaton Tsogt (Mongolia) are packing up and heading out to the west coast.
One coach is spending the rest of ICECP in Colorado Springs. Alfredo Ortiz (Puerto Rico) will take a shooting course at the US Olympic Training Center before the rest of the participants meet him there for the third module of the program.
Milos Tomic (Serbia) is making the longest trip for his apprenticeship. Tomic is heading to the Swiss town of Saasfee, where he will work with the US men’s national ski team.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Patricio F. Bridgewater (Netherlands Antilles) isn’t going anywhere. He will do his apprenticeship at the University of Delaware, working with coach Bonnie Kenny and the two-time defending CAA champion volleyball team.
The other apprenticeship sites include Northern Michigan University (boxing), the Chesapeake Boathouse (kayak), the Pennsylvania Athletic Club Rowing Association (rowing), Remarck Training Center (Taekwando) and the University of Pennsylvania (fencing).
During the apprenticeship, participants will continue to develop their personal projects. They will meet in Colorado Springs from Oct. 11-25 to finish the six-week program.
Summary of 2009 Apprenticeship Sites
St. Joseph’s University’s head men’s basketball coach Phil Martelli is set to give the opening talk of the ICECP program at the morning class session on Tuesday, Sept. 15. Martelli is scheduled to speak to the group at the Trabant Student Center 206 at the University of Delaware from 10 to 11 a.m.
The topic of Coach Martelli’s discussion is the role of the coach in sport development. It focuses on accepting the responsibility of growing the game at home and abroad and impacting players both in sport and in life. His message transcends the specifics of coaching basketball. It is a geared towards the goal of ICECP, which is to teach the participant coaches how to grow their sport in their country, develop athletes as competitors and as people and be ambassadors for their sport.
Coach Martelli’s discussion is intended to set the tone for the six-week program, according to Dr. Matthew Robinson.
“We are very fortunate to have Coach Martelli as our opening speaker. He is a great educator and coach and has success both in the US and abroad with his work with USA Basketball,” Dr. Robinson said.
Phil Martelli has coached the St. Joseph’s men’s basketball team since 1995. In that 14-year span, he has a record of 278-176 and received the Atlantic 10 coach of the year award four times (1997, 2001, 2004 and 2005), as well as the consensus national coach of the year award (2004).
Martelli has ample international experience as well, having served as head coach of the 2005 USA Basketball U21 team that finished fifth at the World Championships. He also served as an assistant coach on USA Basketball squads that earned gold medals at the 2001 FIBA World Championship for Young Men and the 1998 Goodwill Games.
