USATF Coaches Education Meltdown

Vigil wont be there, he told me this himself. Ransone wont be there, he'll be in Europe at the time. Wendy Truvillion was fired from CE because she did a poor job. Charles Clinton is a club coach from AZ with NO coaching ed experience. Save your money and stay home if you planned to go through Sprints, you get much from Truvillion and Clinton. The only group that I would recommend is the Throws because that staff is the same.

The best two event areas - jumps and sprints - are now the worst. The throws remains very good as long as you can tolerate the crapstain sport science instructors they brought in. The only good sport science instructors now are the Stones. Endurance should be less than it's usual average. Multievents is going to be a complete disaster as they're trying to piecemeal it together from other event groups without having dedicated instructors. Enrollment is way down and quality will be too. Way to go Terry Crawford, Doug Logan and Benita Fitzgerald! Unless someone or something (USTFCCA???) steps to the plate and saves this wreck, coaches education in the US will be irrelevant in 2-3 years.

does anyone know what christine brooks has been doing over the last 20 to 30 years? and forgive me if my assumption that she is the woman who coached at penn state in the late 70s-early 80s is wrong.

thank you.

Christine Brooks has taught physiology for the last 3 or 4 years. She's pretty good and had some awesome slides.

Anyone know who's coaching the sprints and multi events?

It is Tuesday afternoon and I am sitting here listening to a hammer lecture (yawn) at the second day of the Stillwater Level 1 school. 73 students and it has been pretty good. Former Level 2 endurance instructor Scott Christensen did a fantastic 2 hour dissection this morning of the endurance events, It is hard to believe it was just a level Level 1 lecture, pretty sure he adds some L2 stuff in there. He relates pretty well to the mile....that is obvious. I have been curious how a single coach could have 4 alumni break 4:00 in the mile. He tells it like it is, with no bull. Can see why he walked away from the establishment, although he never mentioned it. In fact, he said the 14 years of teaching experience with Shexnayder, Winkler and Schmidt made his career.

I just finished up a level 1 school in Greensboro and had a similar experience. Glen McCatee (sp) and Dr. Young were instructors. Young is like a boy genious and Glen does a great job of keeping everyone laughing. I was surprised to see them because both have been mentioned here and I assumed they quite. Both were excellent. Neither mentioned whatever has happened at USATF with coaches ed but one of the students mentioned that it had something to do with the coaches registery. I wasn't sure how that tied in but I didn't know. Either way I really appreciated how good the school was including the other instructor who taught endurance.

Vigil is great......but he's not going, so all I can say is hahahahahahhahahaha. Is this supposed to be coaching education or coaches giveusyourmoneyandwewillshiftyou. Good thing I stayed away as I was thinking of going through and taking sprints this time. What a joke.

I just got word that the USTFCCCA is brewing up some fantastic shit with all the big dogs who resigned from USATF Level 1 involved (Boo, Corn, Young, Schmidt, Winkler) along with some other big names. This year's USATF Level 2 will be a complete disaster that will set off the shift towards the USTFCCCA becoming the top coaches ed body.

I went through Level I for the third time this weekend (refresher for me while a first trip for some of my assistants). Mike Young was the highlight of the event--he's every bit as good as advertised. Andrew Allden was director and handled distance, Glenn McAtee did the throws. The first time I did the course (back in '99), there were hands-on portions that were very helpful. I particularly remember getting a great deal out of Loren Seagrave's sprint presentation. These last two have been 100% classroom/powerpoint instruction, and 21 hours in a chair is simply not the best way to run a railroad. I suppose Young was the best because he literally wrote the book, so he was more fluent in his presentation. I know McAtee is a good coach, but he just read the slides, which were verbatim copies of the curriculum book. Between that and the fact that the sport science portion is all front-loaded, it was a real test of endurance to make it to the more practical, event-centered material. I know my group was a little unusual (with me being a repeater and my 3 assistants being an MD, a chemistry teacher, and a 40-year PE teacher), but I felt like I owed them a bit of an apology for making them spend so much seat time having someone read them a handout based on information they already all knew. That said, the whole deal was worth it just to have Young's input on sprints and jumps. USATF is losing a great deal by losing him.

awesome- I was in the Charleston class too. I'm not a sprints or jumps coach but Dr. Young was the best. Really outstanding presentations. He doesn't even need the slides because he knows the material and adds lots of insights on the way as well. I would listen to him any day of the week and agree that whatever USATF did to make him resign was a mistake. I've never had a better clinician or teacher.

Also, it was my first time going through level 1 so I didn't have anything to compare it to but it was definitely tough staying awake the whole time. Sitting on your butt for 12 hours on Saturday is tough.

Is anyone posting? Are there any threads? Attendance, quality, etc?

bump. curious to know how badly things are failing. or better yet if the students who\'ve never been through before realize how badly things are failing.

Been at the level 2 at nova the past 3 days. I think it's been pretty good so far.

I've learned a ton and so far the instructors have been pretty good, the organization has been fine, no complaints really from anyone that I can tell.

The two sports psych people were really good and Ian Hunter from BYU was excellent as well.

currently in level 2 wrote:

Been at the level 2 at nova the past 3 days. I think it's been pretty good so far.

I've learned a ton and so far the instructors have been pretty good, the organization has been fine, no complaints really from anyone that I can tell.

The two sports psych people were really good and Ian Hunter from BYU was excellent as well.

Have you been to a Level II in the past? Let us know how your event group goes. How many are attending?

Check-in was fine, a little late but worked well. Very disorganized with roll call, name tags, lanyards and some other administrative stuff the first day.

Everything taught is SO vague this far. Someone asked a question and the ex. phys guy responds by saying "It depends what sport you are talking about." Hint: It's not Bocce ball. The Stone's seem to be really good at increasing the max of a football player in the power clean but seem to have no knowledge of how to apply strength routine to a half miler. They also pushed the sale of their own book, which is 100 bucks, and hasn't been referred to at all.

Slides are printed 6 per page in size 8 font, so it's impossible to read. Yellow font doesn't show up so what little is readable is white on a white paper. Keep talking about the same stuff: overload principle, compensation and super compensation. Not applied to a time frame, nothing specific. If I here one more thing about thie Russian guy who wrote a book in '71 (translated to english in '77) Imma lose it.

Can't wait to get into the individual stuff. BTW the people here don't know who is teaching anything.

Update: Psych and Biomechanics were much better today than than the other stuff, mainly because it was engaging. The instructors for this still coach athletes and were able to show and give actual examples of how it would pertain to an athlete.

about 260 people here for level 2

just got done with all the general sports science stuff and taking the exam. some of the instructors are fantastic.

The good: christine brooks did an outstanding job, and her visuals were incredible. she has a website that all the studnets could even preview with video clips, practice quizzes, and interactive demos. The biomechanics was very thorough, well taught by Tyler Wingard and Iain Hunter. For not teaching math or too many problems, the concepts were done as best as i could imagine. Sports psychology also was done very well, but quite a lot of information crammed into the 3 hour block. They probably needed to streamline the material more to decide what to really discuss, but it was very engaging and probably the cause of why it took so long to get through with everyone asking questions.

The not so good: training theory was done very poorly imo. poor slides that were tiny, very redundant, no real proof or strong evidence or specifics, and definitley not specific enough to the events of track and field. But it's just theory, not proof right? Lost some respect for it when they said a marathoner should incorportate 6-8 weeks where the main focus is pure speed training (maybe that's the new way???). the exam was very ambiguous, and many grammatical mistakes too making the questions not mean what they intended to mean.

orgainzation is pretty bad, but the overall school has been very informative, and several of the instructors are fantastic. Just hoping the event specific instructors know their stuff.

The level II was going well IMO, as being up to date on the shake up of USATF CE prior to getting here I was expecting the worst. I found it humorous that for the level II all of materials had the old instructors names all over it...on the front cover there was a disclaimer stating that the materials were used with their permission.

With the start of event group work today, however, I am thoroughly disappointed to say the least. For those wondering, I am in the sprint/hurdles group. It was my understanding that the class was "limited" to 50 seats. To my surprise when I arrived the instructors (Truvillion and Clinton, more on them later), called 80 fricking names off. To twist the knife, the first hour or so of the class was spent fielding questions from club and high school coaches (didn't know they were allowed to this) on how to deal with parents and problematic athletes not buying in to their coaching philosophy.

Instructors are literally reading off the powerpoint, no engagment of the material. There was almost a coup because Clinton was flying through the material so fast that the students could not keep up. He kept saying "the material is in the book, please hold questions until later" and "The information is directly from your book, just follow along." Finally someone said the information doesn't match the book (funny because for the Sprint group they are using the book written by Winkler, Seagrave, Shaver, and Boo).

If I didn't need a Level II to get a job I would ask for my money back.