Over the course of its seven-year history, the U of A's Canadian Athletics Coaching Centre has built a serious online presence, gathering information and resources to share with coaches across Canada and beyond. A recent top-to-bottom remake of the centre's website promises to make it more accessible and interactive than ever.
A good website is particularly important in a field defined by rapid and constant change, says the centre's director, Jim Denison. "Coaching is not a qualification that you get, and then your learning stops. Your knowledge continually must grow, because the information is changing about what athletes need, about the technical components."
Along with navigating a dizzying amount of information, coaches also have to constantly adjust to the particular needs of individual athletes. "Every person you coach is different," he says. "They come from different backgrounds, they have different physical and mental capabilities. So, a coach needs to know how to assess that, make decisions, plan a program, and evaluate it." Denison hopes the new website will help coaches quickly zero in on the information they need, when they need it.
Fortunately, in revamping the website, Denison and his staff were building on a solid foundation laid by the centre's original director, Kevin Tyler, along with colleague Derek Evely. "They got a lot of content up on the site, and established it as a leading resource in the world for coach education in track and field and athletics," says Denison.
Brian Kropman, the centre's current associate director, has managed the website since he arrived at the centre in 2005. With his intimate experience with the website's strengths and weaknesses, he jumped at the opportunity to make it even better. "This new website took over a year to develop," he says. "It integrates three of our former web properties-our website, our online coaches' forum, and our media-on-demand manager. It brings them all together into one nice, very clean and concise website."
By weaving interaction into every facet of the new website, Kropman hopes to strengthen the worldwide community of track and field coaches, and to boost the profession overall. "We hope that the new website helps coaches communicate with each other, not only nationally but internationally. So that there's a sharing of ideas and concepts, to help improve the coaches and ultimately better their athletes' performance."
Kropman has already received some strong positive feedback on the site, but he emphasizes it will take time for it to really begin to pay off. "This is a new thing to track and field coaches. The social networking component may take a little while to catch on, but we've definitely seen an increase in the number of people registered on the site, as well as the number of people who are accessing our content. We're very happy about that.
"Since we launched, we've had people from 94 countries visit our website. We definitely see spikes in our users when new content comes out. So, word of mouth is spreading."
Denison is equally excited about the centre's other initiatives, such as a recent national sprint conference in Toronto that drew 152 coaches from across Canada and beyond. And in February the centre launched a national mentoring project, in partnership with Athletics Canada.
"We'll be selecting one coach from every province," he explains. "These are people who are currently a little bit off the national radar, but who have the potential to really make an impact internationally." In the three-month program, participating coaches will study in their own provinces before gathering in Edmonton for a weekend of intensive instruction. Later, they will continue to study and interact via the website.
Denison, himself a former athlete and coach, clearly enjoys the opportunity to help those following behind him. Coaching can feel like a lonely pursuit, but the centre's new website will give coaches instant access to the knowledge and advice of their peers. "Good coaches are like good scientists," he says. "They're forming hypotheses about how to help an athlete improve. They're introducing a theory or approach-not too many variables at one-so they can get a sense of what's working or not."
At the same time, the website can help consolidate the almost infinite facets of the coaching profession. "Our field, of physical education and recreation, and sports science, in many cases gets fragmented," he says. "In coaching, as a discipline, it all has to come together. Blending that mix is really exciting and stimulating.
"There's always something more to learn."
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