The con­cept of sport is prob­a­bly as old as man. Blan­chard and Ches­ka, in their book on the An­thro­pol­o­gy of Sport, re­port­ed ev­i­dence of sport in the ar­chae­o­log­i­cal ru­ins of an­cient civil­i­sa­tions world­wide. Wher­ev­er sport ex­ist­ed, the con­cept of a coach was al­so present. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, coach­es were ath­letes who on re­tir­ing be­came coach­es. They held oth­er jobs and, ‘on the side’, coached young ath­letes. Whilst this mod­el is still pre­dom­i­nant in many parts of the world, oth­ers have made sig­nif­i­cant strides to­wards the pro­fes­sion­al­i­sa­tion of sports coach­ing.

The so­cial­i­sa­tion of sports dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry laid the foun­da­tion for pro­fes­sion­al­i­sa­tion of sports. Rev­enue streams were cre­at­ed from gam­bling by the aris­to­crats who at­tend­ed the events and coach­es were re­quired to have some for­mal train­ing. To­day, sport is a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar busi­ness with gov­ern­ing bod­ies, poli­cies, rules and reg­u­la­tions. For some, the prac­tice of coach­ing evolved from a side­line ac­tiv­i­ty to a full-time job as it be­came recog­nised that for­malised train­ing as a sports coach was im­por­tant in the de­vel­op­ment of pro­fes­sion­al sports.

But what does it mean to be a pro­fes­sion­al? In 2001, Sports Coach UK com­mis­sioned a re­port with the main pur­pose of dis­cussing no­tions of ‘pro­fes­sion’, ‘pro­fes­sion­al­ism’, ‘pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice’ and pro­fes­sion­al­i­sa­tion’, and to es­tab­lish the case for, and con­di­tions nec­es­sary to achieve, the pro­fes­sion­al­i­sa­tion of coach­ing in the Unit­ed King­dom. The re­port pro­duced by Tay­lor & Gar­ratt (2007) put for­ward the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria for judg­ing a coach­ing pro­fes­sion:

• Pro­fes­sion­al ed­u­ca­tion

• A dis­tinct and spe­cialised body of knowl­edge

• Ca­reer struc­ture and path­ways

• Ex­plic­it eth­i­cal and val­ue sys­tems

• An in­de­pen­dent pro­fes­sion­al mem­ber­ship body

• Pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice

• Clar­i­ty and de­f­i­n­i­tion of roles and re­mits

• Op­por­tu­ni­ties for con­tin­u­ous pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment.

So how do we mea­sure up in the Caribbean? There are sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions that of­fer ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion in sports coach­ing. Cur­ricu­lum varies, with some hav­ing a so­cial sci­ence bias and oth­ers plac­ing high­er em­pha­sis on sci­ence-based sub­jects like anato­my, phys­i­ol­o­gy, bio­me­chan­ics and mo­tor con­trol. There are sev­er­al sport-spe­cif­ic coach­ing cer­tifi­cates avail­able in the re­gion. The Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) of­fers a Caribbean Coach­ing Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion through the dif­fer­ent Olympic as­so­ci­a­tions. The UWI Cave Hill Cam­pus, through a joint ven­ture be­tween the UWI and the Caribbean Foot­ball Union, of­fers Cer­tifi­cate and Diplo­ma pro­grammes in Foot­ball Coach­ing.

Whilst we meet the cri­te­ria of hav­ing pro­fes­sion­al ed­u­ca­tion, the sig­nif­i­cant vari­abil­i­ty in train­ing pro­grammes speaks vol­umes about the lack of clar­i­ty as to what con­sti­tutes the dis­tinct and spe­cialised body of knowl­edge that de­fines sports coach­ing. This is fur­ther com­pound­ed by the lack of de­f­i­n­i­tion of the roles and re­mits of the sports coach. I have ob­served many sit­u­a­tions where the coach is per­form­ing du­ties that are with­in the re­mit of a fit­ness train­er, mas­sage ther­a­pist, phys­i­cal ther­a­pist, psy­chol­o­gist, nu­tri­tion­ist and some­times even the med­ical doc­tor. Whilst this is some­times dri­ven by the un­avail­abil­i­ty of these spe­cial­ists in many sit­u­a­tions, it re­sults in ad­verse out­comes for ath­letes who were nev­er en­cour­aged to vis­it the rel­e­vant pro­fes­sion­als for ap­pro­pri­ate care since they were ‘man­aged’ by the coach.

There is no struc­tured path­way for pro­fes­sion­al growth and de­vel­op­ment that young coach­es can use as a road map to plan their ca­reers. In the­o­ry, coach­es who pre­pare our ath­letes for in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions, like the Olympics and World Games, should be clas­si­fied as elite-lev­el coach­es. How­ev­er, the path­way for this is quite mud­dy and the process for se­lec­tion ap­pears to be ad hoc. We have seen the full gamut of coach­es work­ing with na­tion­al ath­letes in the re­gion. This in­cludes par­ents who ex­celled in the sport but have no for­mal train­ing as coach­es and who are now coach­ing their chil­dren, cer­ti­fied coach­es who have aca­d­e­m­ic de­grees in the sub­ject mat­ter along with pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ence as ath­letes, and coach­es with aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion who nev­er ex­celled at the sport as ath­letes but have ex­pe­ri­ence as coach­es and track records of pro­duc­ing win­ners. In some sit­u­a­tions, per­sons are giv­en the job be­cause they have the time and can vol­un­teer their ser­vices whilst in oth­ers, they are paid to do a job. Meth­ods of de­ter­min­ing com­pen­sa­tion ap­pears to be quite ar­bi­trary and coach­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions strug­gle to pro­duce re­pro­ducible meth­ods of de­ter­min­ing com­pen­sa­tion. One can­not help but spec­u­late about the ex­tent to which this lack of struc­ture is stunt­ing the growth and de­vel­op­ment of sport in the re­gion.

We do not have reg­u­la­to­ry or gov­ern­ing bod­ies for sports coach­es. We al­so do not have pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tions for coach­es in the re­gion. The im­pli­ca­tion of this is an ab­sence of agreed-on eth­i­cal codes of con­duct and stan­dards of prac­tice to which coach­es should ad­here. Es­sen­tial­ly, coach­es work in ac­cor­dance with the poli­cies of the or­gan­i­sa­tion at which they are em­ployed. Like­wise, there is no gov­ern­ing body to deal with mis­con­duct. In sum­ma­ry, as a re­gion, we ap­pear to have an ex­cep­tion­al­ly long way to go if we would like sports coach­ing to be­come a pro­fes­sion on our side of the world.