Coach­es will not be left out dur­ing the lock­down due to the dread­ful coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic which is rag­ing around the globe.

The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) is en­sur­ing they are not ne­glect­ed through its On­line Caribbean Coach­ing Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gramme (CC­CP) which starts on (Mon­day and run un­til Fri­day.

Fa­cil­i­tat­ing the course, which was pre­vi­ous­ly card­ed for ear­ly March over three week­ends but had to be post­poned to help pre­vent the spread of COVID-19, is An­tho­ny Mar­cano, who is cur­rent­ly the high­est qual­i­fied field hock­ey coach in the Caribbean hold­ing an In­ter­na­tion­al Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion (FIH) Lev­el III coach as well as an FIH Ed­u­ca­tor Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

He is pleased that the bod­ies are tak­ing the ini­tia­tive say­ing: "TTOC and CANOC have start­ed the ball rolling and us­ing this pe­ri­od to en­hance coach­es. Yes, putting to­wards ath­letes is es­sen­tial but hav­ing qual­i­ty coach­es are im­por­tant," said the en­thu­si­as­tic CC­CP in­struc­tor with the TTOC while hold­ing the po­si­tion of tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor at the com­mit­tee.

Across var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms, ath­letes have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in vir­tu­al train­ing to main­tain their fit­ness lev­els and over­all readi­ness for when the world re­turns to nor­mal­cy. It is the sim­i­lar thought process of TTOC and CANOC, which is both head­ed by Bri­an Lewis, to help val­i­date coach­ing skills us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy avail­able. This is as part of their ac­cel­er­at­ed dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pror­gramme ac­cord­ing to Lewis.

"Most of what is out there is ath­lete-spe­cif­ic. They have been us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to aid them dur­ing this pe­ri­od and the TTOC and CANOC thought to do the same for coach­es so we are try­ing to do as much as we can do," said Mar­cano, the na­tion­al women's hock­ey coach.

The Pan Amer­i­can coach, who sits on the Pan Amer­i­can Sport­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­SO) Coach­ing Com­mis­sion added that par­tic­i­pants have been pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary tools to com­plete the pro­gramme, which the main ob­jec­tive is to im­prove the com­pe­ten­cy lev­el of all coach­es in all sport­ing dis­ci­plines through­out the Caribbean.

"Man­u­als have been dis­trib­uted al­ready, they have re­ceived their soft copies and work­books which they will have to do to cor­re­spond with each top­ic. There are nine lev­els to com­pete in one week. They will get two weeks to go over every­thing and then will sit an ex­am be­cause cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is in­volved," said the part-time hock­ey in­struc­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, who con­ducts Lev­el I and Lev­el II cours­es for the lo­cal sport­ing body, T&T Hock­ey Board (TTHB).

Mar­cano al­so con­ducts cours­es around the re­gion in high per­for­mance, tac­ti­cal and tech­ni­cal skill and al­so prac­ti­cal im­ple­men­ta­tion. He holds the In­ter­na­tion­al Coach­ing En­rich­ment Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gram (ICECP) ac­cred­i­ta­tion from the Unit­ed States Olympic Com­mit­tee, the Delaware Uni­ver­si­ty and In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee.

The CC­CP ses­sions will run from 8 am to 12 noon dai­ly in prepa­ra­tion for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and are open to all coach­es.

"I don't want to over­work them so in the morn­ing ses­sions course work will be done then they will have the rest of the day to read man­u­als and to do the course work­books. The pro­gramme is Cana­di­an-based so it can be utilised in Cana­da be­cause it is recog­nised there."