The Grande Prairie Regional Sport Connection is hosting a series of coach clinics this spring to promote quality coaching in Grande Prairie.
GPRSC Executive Director Karna Germsheid says the series will provide new and seasoned coaches with the opportunity to improve their coaching skills and inspire aspiring potential coaches to take the leap.
“It can be a scary position, coaching,” she says. “These workshops help coaches that are interested in coaching long-term and those community coaches that are like- okay well somebody’s gotta coach, please give me the tools to confidently move forward with this.”
Germsheid says coaching availability is a need for sports across all levels, and the organization prides itself on connecting quality coaches with teams in need.
“You think it just happens but there’s a million different volunteers that are just hard to get a lot of the time,” she says. “The fact is that we’re trying to find coaches out there and sometimes they need a little bit of support in their confidence to be able to go out and volunteer.”
The executive director adds that the training will help break old habits passed down by coaches of another time, which she says helps support both the coaches and their athletes to be successful.
“A lot of times we just coach how we were coached and sometimes there can be a danger to that because there are some things that when we were young that maybe don’t fit with the culture of coaching nowadays.”
Attendees will be subject to full NCCP training through coach.ca and will receive legitimate coaching certification that adds to their coaching portfolio.
Interested individuals can sign up on the Grande Prairie Regional Sport Connection’s website.
