Athletics coaches in South Africa passed the IAAF course with flying colours and will soon be passing on their knowledge to young athletes
ATHLETICS: Julian Drew
AT the awards ceremony for the first International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) level one coaching course to be staged in this country, course leader Peter Thompson revealed that the participants had achieved the best overall results since the IAAF introduced the course five years ago.
Thompson, a British coach who has been a consultant to the IAAF since the inception of the program, said so far over 4 000 coaches have passed the level one course worldwide.
The course is part of the United Kingdom-South Africa sport initiative which was set up as a result of British Prime Minister John Major’s visit to South Africa last October.
This intiative, which was developed in close consultation with the relevant sports bodies and the National Sports Council, aims at making South Africa self-sufficient in its ability to educate and train football and athletics coaches and sports administrators.
The athletics project is the first of the three separate programmes to be implemented. The first phase saw 21 coaches undergo intensive training for two weeks in every discipline of track and field athletics from sprints, hurdles and long distance running to race walking, hammer throwing and pole vaulting.
Successful completion of the course enables participants to proceed to the IAAf level two and three courses and eventually to the IAAF lecturer’s course which will then qualify them to train coaches themselves.
This is the ultimate objective of the athletics initiative because once Athletics South Africa (ASA) has a pool of qualified coach educators it will be able to train its own coaches without outside assistance.
The course in Germiston was conducted by Thompson, John Velzian, director of the IAAF regional development office in Nairobi, and South African coach Abrie de Swardt. De Swardt and Ian Harries were the first South African coaches to complete the IAAF lecturer’s course at a seminar in Nairobi last October.
The second phase of the athletics initiative will take place in Stellenbosch in April and May when up to 15 coaches will do the lecturers course over three weeks, followed by a four-day pilot course where the newly qualified lecturers will give an ASA beginners coaching course to 50 basic level coaches at three different centres in and around Cape Town.
The final phase will see 11 of these beginner’s courses held throughout the country by the new South African lecturers.
What is especially encouraging is the people who were chosen for this first course. They are proven coaches who have already contributed substantially to the growth of athletics but through lack of opportunity in the past have not had access to the necessary technical training.
People like Jan Simango, who founded Loiusa Leballo’s club, Quite Cool AC in Soweto; Nelson Ncala, who set up Lekoa AC in Sharpeville and introduced athletes like Lydia Mofula to athletics; Magda Botha, a teacher from Port Elizabeth who saw world junior 200m champion Heide Seyerling matriculate from her school last year; and Kelvin Johnson from Potchefstroom who coached new South African 5 000m record-holder Shadrack Hoff at school, were all on the course.
They have all now earned their ”official stripes” which can only benefit athletics in the long term.
On the final two days of the course the coaches had to take written and practical examinations. The written exam counted for 100 marks, the practical exams 80 marks with the balance of 20 marks for behaviour and attendance.
In order to proceed to the level two course it was necessary to score 60, 60 and 15 marks respectively with at least 80 percent average overall.
”Normally we expect three to five people to be eligible for the level two course out of 30 participants, but on this course we had 17 out of 21 which is just incredible,” said Thompson. ”What I found really positive was that we had coaches from seven different cultures who could come together and work so well with one another.
”It was also interesting that there wasn’t a polarisation of results related to past opportunities and experiences. There was a completly mixed stratification of results,” said Thompson.
Kelvin Johnson, who is on the Western Transvaal development committee, said he had already arranged his first coaching clinic for March 1 so that he can start passing on his new knowledge to others. ”I’ve always been a long distance runner and my experience with other events has been minimal but now that’s all going to change,” he said enthusiastically.
”Within Western Transvaal there are a few black athletes who have wanted to do the pole vault, shot put and hammer throw but the coaches at Potchefstroom University have always had limited time available to help them. Now I can get involved and hopefully we will see the profile of the field events beginning to change in the future.”
On his last day before returning to England, Thompson went out to Meadowlands stadium in Soweto to see the local area primary school meeting where Jan Simango was helping out. Thompson was enthralled by the enthusiasm of the children from 68 schools and later, when Simango’s club athletes came to train, he confided, ”It’s people like Jan who can really make athletics happen in South Africa.”
But Simango is just one of 21 newly qualified coaches. By the end of the year with our own coach educators that number is going to grow exponentially. Then South African athletics will really begin to happen.