The intention of this program is to share with other professionals in our industry the power of collaboration as we build a knowledge base and develop an emotional intelligence foundation for successful coaching.  We will adhere to our vision as progressive, fact driven, process-based, science inspired, creative, innovative, truthful and transparent mentors as we aim to guide coaches through our methodology.

We have over 50 years of combined coaching experience and yet feel that every day presents a new learning opportunity.  With the hope to improve and unify our sport, we believe that the current restrictions we are limited by even further highlight the need for coach education, a new level of concept mastery, professional development as well as industry connection and community. 

Modules will build upon each other with an emphasis on full engagement in each topic creating an interactive learning format.  Weekly sessions will be broken down into three sections: Concept of Coaching, Technical Component and Discussion & Community.  

The NTCLEP is the USOC’s blueprint to assist Team USA coaches in achieving international competitive excellence. The program is open to national team coaches of any Olympic, Paralympic or Pan American sport, and over the course of 16 months, coaches attend five seminars. This allows coaches the opportunity not only to learn from experts within the seminars, but learn from their colleagues as well. For many of the coaches, this unique environment was a large part of what attracted them to the NTCLEP.

“Really, one of the biggest pieces is being exposed to all the other coaches, all the other sports, and all the different perspectives that they have,” said Mike Jankowski, head coach of the U.S. Snowboarding and U.S. Freeskiing teams for the halfpipe and slopestyle disciplines, and a member of the first cohort of NTCLEP coaches. “We all share common goals, and at the same time, we all have such varied sports and varied backgrounds. So it’s really interesting to get everybody’s perspectives on things and share best practices, challenges that we’ve had along the way, and how much we’ve learned so we can really feed off of each other.”

While similar coaching education programs exist, this inclusivity across both summer and winter sports make the NTCLEP the first of its kind in the world. The USOC brings in some of the best leadership developers in the world to work with the participating coaches, tailoring the seminars to provide development that the National Governing Bodies specifically asked for. Seminar topics include discussions about high performance sport, a look at personality types and communication, practice structure and skill acquisition, how the human brain works and other aspects of sport science, how to cultivate a coaching staff and more.

“The USOC has never really offered any type of continuing education to our national team coaches, so we wanted to come up and fill the gap of not necessarily sport-specific information, but some general pillars of knowledge that they would need,” said Christine Bolger, associate director of coaching education at the USOC.

Over 40 national team head or assistant coaches applied for each of the two cohorts, with 24 in total being selected. All of the 24 are medal-impacting coaches that will have opportunities at either the Rio 2016 Olympic Games or the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games.

“Since they’re coaches from different sports, it’s very rare that they get to sit around the table like this and share war stories and strategies and tackle issues together. It’s been fantastic to have them collaborate. We’ve got beach volleyball working with bobsled. Where are you going to get that kind of experience?”

“We’re trying to build a legacy for them, and connect the pipeline of coaches and have the information that these guys are learning trickle down to their development process,” Bolger said. “We’re seeing that with ski and snowboard already. We’ve got two coaches in the pilot and one in the second cohort, so they’re working together to kind of establish some processes that may not have been there before.”

Bolger says that the feedback she’s received so far has been overwhelmingly positive. As the coaches chatted during breaks in the seminar, congratulating each other on recent world championship wins and discussing coaching methods, it’s easy to see why.

“It’s gone above and beyond my expectations in many ways.”

Full Article from Team USA