2009 Program News

10/15/09: Participants Utilizing New Knowledge in The Development of Their Personal Projects

CSICECPWith a wealth of new knowledge from class sessions and a sport-specific apprenticeship, the ICECP participants are on their way to completing their personal projects.

Once their projects are done, they can hit the ground running when they return home in 10 days and be able to have an immediate impact on their sport and sport structure in their countries.

The coaches have applied everything they learned from the educational program at Delaware and their two-week apprenticeship in the project plans. Now, they are adding the information they gain at the US Olympic Training Center and putting the final touches on the plans they will implement in a few short weeks.

Many of the coaches have project outlines completed and are now working on fleshing out the details of their timetables and implantation programs.

“I finished collecting data and finding references for my project,” said Lam Ting, the technical director of taekwondo and junior/senior national teams coach in Indonesia. “Next, I will develop a curriculum for a three-tiered coaching education program.”

Ting’s project is the development and structuring of a coaching education program in Indonesia. Through his three-tiered system, he intends to implement a systematic method of rating and increasing a coach’s level of proficiency.

Misshame Anareme, a basketball coach from Togo, completed his project outline and is currently working on an introduction to his program.

“I sent what I have to my national Olympic committee and my federation to see what I can do when I get back home. That way, I make sure what I am working on here, I can implement in Togo.”

Anareme said his next step is to “utilize the books [he] has and find sources for implementing a coaching education plan.”

His project is a coaching education and grassroots development plan for basketball in Togo. It is intended to make coaches and PE teachers more proficient in instructing, teaching and coaching basketball to youth and adult players on a national level.

“I can take what I learned [in ICECP] and from DVD’s to help my athletes, but we also need something to improve the coaches,” Anareme explained.

In the development of his project plan, he has taken something from each part of the ICECP educational program.

“This is the first time I’ve been in the world of sport, so everything is so helpful.”

He said that the lessons on sport nutrition and long-term athlete development stood out as especially helpful in his project work.

The apprenticeships also helped some coaches to further develop their projects. Ian Weithers, the national senior team coach for judo in Barbados, picked up some important information while at the North Miami Judo training center and Panther Judo club, both in Florida.

“We saw the athletes who were selected nationally and their training regimes. It reinforced the concept of centralization of training of elite athletes to better train and select national team members,” he recalled.

Weithers’ project is focused on talent identification and national selection. He said that competition is currently the major method of selection and that he wants to add more science and methodology to the system. With a better system in place, Weithers intends to create a better selection process that will improve the allocation of funds by selecting the best athletes to invest in.

“We had a situation a few years ago where we had one elite senior athlete and several elite junior athletes. We had to decide whether to invest in the present or the future.”

When Weithers implements this program, there will be an unbiased, documented and systematic method for team selection and financial allocation. He drew more help for his project from a testing and evaluation presentation in Colorado Springs.

As Weithers adds to his project, Alfredo Ortiz is ready to put the final details in his. The assistant coach on the national Puerto Rican shotgun shooting team, Ortiz ran his project by his ICECP tutor to get some feedback before he completes it.

“My tutor said everything is looking good. She is helping me add a program for principles of biomechanics.”

Ortiz’s project focuses on coaching education for shooting coaches in Puerto Rico. He is drawing on what he sees being done for ICECP as a basis for his program.