Vanderbilt University will host a USATF Level I Coaches School on January 17-19, 2003. Featured speakers will be:
Oscar Jensen, USATF Lead Instructor Education Director
Kevin O?Donnell, Speed Dynamics
Loren Seagrave, International Performance Institute
Lori Shepard, Head Women?s Track Coach, Vanderbilt University
This will also be a great opportunity to see Vanderbilt's new Mondo Track. For more on the clinic, visit
http://www.vucommodores.com/track/USATF%20Level%20I%20brochure.htm
They should have head cross coach Jim Spivey speak. He is a class act and knows his stuff since he was an elite runner for so long. Just my two cents.
A few questions from someone who doesn't know much about the certification process. Who generally shows up to these classes? Is it primarily high school coaches, college runners who want to coach someday, has-been pros who are turning to coaching? Also does just going to the classes make you a certified level 1 coach? Is there a test one needs to pass to be certified? Is any experience necessary to attend? And finally how often are such classes offered? Sorry I asked so many but the website wasn't real helpful.
First of all, it's about time Vanderbilt got a new track.
Second, Level I is a truly introductory course. No experience necessary - the class I went to had high school teachers learning to coach track for the first time, new college assistant coaches, and club coaches. You take the class, and there's a written "take home" test that you take and send in on your own schedule.
Some time was spent on how to deal with coaching kids, not going overboard on the whole coaching thing, not screwing them up. Teaching events from scratch to people who'd never done them. Almost all the events were covered in brief. I went with a buddy who was a sprints/field events, and between the two of us (I'm a distance guy), we both learned something we didn't know in at least some of the lectures.
You have to take Level I to go on to Level II (more advanced) and beyond.
It depends on the area you live in - some places you're lucky if they're once a year. The one I took was in Wisconsin, and there was one guy from Tennessee there.
Thanks for the answers idealist, what is the difference between in what you would learn at a level 2 class vs. a level 1?
Level II is where you really learn stuff. It is broken up into content areas where you learn the science behind that area over 8 days (L-I is 2.5 days). You cannot go to L-II w/o passing L-I, obviously.
The content areas available are:
Endurance, Sprints/Hurdles, Jumps, Throws, Multis
Go with your strongest area the 1st time through or it'll be a LONG week. To take the Multis section I believe you need to have gone to 2 L-II's before taking that section.
L-II is only offered once a year and it rotates to a different region. This year it is in NC, so anyone in the East should get their L-I this spring if they want L-II this summer.
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