Who chooses to minor in coaching?
"I have wanted to be a coach ever since I was a kid," says a junior doing an internship at the Basketball Hall of Fame. She wants to coach NCAA Division II athletes after graduation. "I chose coaching fundamentals because I love playing soccer, and I might want to get into coaching someday," says a recent graduate. Another coaching fundamentals minor wants to coach little league. Another wants to teach history and coach basketball for a living. Or, says a senior, "If you are not interested in being a teacher, which I am not, but you are still interested in learning some of the skills that are involved in education, I think coaching is a good minor." Students who minor in coaching fundamentals, says a professor, "learn how to coach. They learn the theory behind coaching, the principles of strength and conditioning; different techniques of how to coach a junior varsity as compared to a varsity player, or an elite athlete as compared to someone who is just beginning in a sport. They learn to be leaders."

"What it takes to be a coach"
"The coaching fundamentals minor gives you a good idea of what it takes to be a coach, what the overall duties are. You get a good idea of how to train and condition athletes, while not necessarily teaching the individual techniques and skills that are involved with specific sports. That you can research on your own," says a senior. "It helped me learn where the coaches are coming from; how to motivate people, how to get a group to work together when you have a lot of different personalities," says a recent graduate. "I already have a grasp of a lot of the techniques of coaching from playing the sports, but the coaching minor helps teach how to deal with the mental aspects of things and working with different types of athletes or different kids," says a junior. "I'm specifically interested in basketball, but the minor helps give me ideas about other sports and how they are run." A coaching fundamentals professor says, "I think the most demanding aspect of the minor is that students don't realize what coaching really means until they get into it. They learn to analyze and synthesize a sport and human movement, to make it most efficient for someone to become successful in a sport."

Team dynamics
"Having done sports all along, I wanted to learn how to teach what I was learning in terms of team dynamics — how to work with groups, how to motivate, how to help people. Not everybody is academic, and I wanted to know how I could help people in areas other than academics," says a recent graduate who majored in English and education. "What I have learned most about coaching is communication skills," says a senior coaching fundamentals minor with a sports management major and a second minor in business administration. "The skills I have learned from taking the coaching courses are probably the most valuable skills I have learned at [Principia]. In the work force today, working in teams and with other people, that's where it's going. Being able to listen to others, to convey effectively what you are trying to say is vital," says a senior. "I've learned to present my ideas more efficiently." A professor adds, "We teach small group dynamics because that's what teams are. They are small groups, and you, as a coach, need to know how to lead them in a direction and help them to develop goals and objectives so that the team can become successful."

Leadership training
"The minor has taught me how to stand for what I believe in, to say what's on my mind; but I have also learned more tactful ways of saying these things, especially in critiquing athletes," says a junior majoring in sports management. "You can't just yell at your player and say, 'You stink.' You have to find a better way of saying it, like, 'Let's work on this and this and this.' And you can use that approach with anything." In the Leadership class, says a junior history major, "there's a lot of reading, but you get into things like ethics and morals. We even came up with a mission statement, and that is something that I will take with me and continue to revise." One coaching fundamentals minor says what she learned in her Leadership class she'll never forget, adding, "I'm applying it now [in my internship] in my relationships with everyone I work with."

Exploring different coaching styles
In one course, says a junior, each student creates his or her own sports program. He notes, "It helps you discover your own coaching philosophies, your techniques, what you feel is the best way to approach athletes. Basically, it helps you develop your own coaching style as you learn about the different approaches out there." Another junior says, "I was able to focus mostly on basketball when I did specific projects, but lots of times you're learning from the other students in your classes. You learn about the sports they specialize in." The professors are "all involved in coaching, so they give perspective on what they have learned, what they have gotten out of coaching, and they bring that to class," says a recent graduate pursuing a career in sports marketing. The courses "showed me how to make game plans, set up practices, develop what the goals are behind practices — focusing on helping individuals grow to develop their skills through developing their teamwork. Just a lot of the behind the scenes stuff that you don't think about as much as a player."

"Putting the fundamentals . . . into effect"
"I had so much fun with my [coaching fundamentals] minor it's hard to think of it as demanding. I think being creative was demanding. Instead of traditional coaching or PE drills, we had to come up with things that were fun, interesting, and still got the information across. That was challenging," says a recent graduate who double majored in English and education. "In the Techniques of Teaching and Coaching class, we each put together a notebook creating and developing our team. That included the team schedule, practices, pre-season, and post-season. I really liked it," says a junior also majoring in sports management. One recent graduate, who has coached football since graduation, says his favorite class was Theory of Coaching. "That's probably the number one class," he says, "in terms of putting the fundamentals of coaching into effect."