Sport Australia has launched a new training course to help community coaches around the nation deliver world-class, fun and inclusive sporting experiences for everyone.
Free of charge and expected to reach up to 500,000 community coaches, Sport Australia’s new Community Coaching Essential Skills Course has been developed in collaboration with the sports and will be available to local clubs, their volunteer coaches as well as players and athletes.
Announced by the Chief Executive of the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) Kieren Perkins, the launch of the course was a key part of Sport Australia’s new approach to community coaching announced in the past week or so.
“Being a coach is more than just skills and drills,” Mr Perkins said.
”The environment a coach creates is critical to delivering a positive sporting experience, encouraging more people to play and stay in organised sport,” he said.
“To help coaches achieve this, we’ve designed the new Essential Skills course to shake up traditional community coach education.”
Mr Perkins said the new approach had won the praise of high-profile coaches including cricket’s Greg Chappell, Olympic cyclist Brad McGee and Paralympic champion Louise Sauvage.
“Greg, Brad and Louise were key contributors to Sport Australia’s recent Coaching & Officiating podcast series and Louise is also featuring throughout the new Essential Skills course.”
He said dozens of sporting organisations had welcomed the change with Hockey Australia seeing an alignment between the online course and their new national approach to coach support.
“We’re really excited about the new Essential Skills course as it talks the same language and feeds seamlessly into our plans to increase our number of accredited coaches,” Hockey Australia Chief Strategy Officer Michael Johnston said.
“These are unpaid roles so we need to support coaches as best we can through providing them with the relevant information at the relevant time on their coaching journey.”
Mr Perkins said that in developing the course, Sport Australia had partnered with Sport Integrity Australia to introduce coaches to important Safeguarding and Child Safe Practices information.
“Safeguarding is the process of protecting adults and children from harm and is the responsibility of everyone in sport,” he said.
“Child Safe Practices are a preventative and proactive approach to keeping children safe.”
He said that over the coming months, Sport Australia is to deliver even more resources to support community coaches including webinars, new podcasts and dedicated master classes designed to expand on the course content.
The new Essential Skills Course replaces the Community Coaching General Principles Course and can be accessed via the Australian Sport Learning Centre at this PS News link.
