Role of the coach in the club

[fencerontheline]

A friend and I were discussing the role of a competitive coach in the club. Our conflicting viewpoints are as follows:

Mine
- A coaches role is a prepatory one.
The coach should prepare the fencer technically, tactically, physically, and psychologically for competition

-A coach is in part responsible for the maturation and development of their student as a person, meaning that they should praise the student for work well done (inside and outside of fencing) and they should chastize the student for improper behavior within and without the club (For example, rudeness, bad attitude, and unethical behavior should be addressed). In this way, the coach plays a role in the moral and ethical development of their students.

My friend disagrees with this viewpoint. His opinion:
The coach's role should be limited to solely the preparation of a fencer, and should not extend beyond these boundries. The coach should have complete control over how the fencer acts as a fencer on the strip and in practice, but only to a superficial level of behavioral instruction, just to guarentee that club runs with a certain level of politeness and safety. The coach should not judge a fencer's actions outside of when he's doing something fencing related (footwork, drills, bouting, lessons). Anything else is not considered a coaches expertise, and lies in the hands of either parents, or someone delegated in the club to deal with behavior, code of conduct, etc.

What do you guys think?

[darius]

Two words: Coach prerogative.

darius

[Peach]

If a coach is solely a technical consultant in a place where there is a distinct and carefully delineated division of labor, as if the club is a production-line factory, then you could certainly separate responsibilities out as in the second scenario. But coaches generally aren't technicians and fencers aren't products; that's not a sufficiently descriptive and flexible metaphor.

Coaches, like teachers, often have roles that overlap in complex ways with those of parents, and there are complicated forces at work in any situation where a relative expert works with a relative novice in a teacher-student relationship. Sometimes, because it's so situational and personal, the nature of a coach's role depends on how the coach defines that role. As a parent, I would not have been comfortable with a coach who didn't care how a student was doing in school, or who didn't care if students were doing drugs or doing stupid things while at tournaments. One of the things I liked about having my daughter in fencing was that she belonged to a community of people who supported her, and that her father and I weren't raising her in isolation and trying to achieve that thankless and generally futile task of raising someone entirely isolated from the culture in which she lived.

[peet]

At my club, we have a favorite saying which we use whenever my coach quizzes everyone during footwork drills. He'll ask: "Which should be the fastest part of your advance-lunge? The advance or the lunge?" or "When is the best time to attack your opponent?"

Everyone scratches their head for a moment, and then someone finally yells:

"It Depends!!"

I think it applies here too.

Depends on the nature of the relationship between the coach & fencer, the availability of others (such as parents) to take responsibility for these issues, the age/maturity level of the fencer (heck, the age/maturity level of the coach!), the context (club bouting, local tournament, national tournament), etc...

I can think of many times I've thought "man, someone needs to reel that kid in before he gets himself in really hot water. Who and where the heck is his coach??"

I can also think of situations in which it could be really inappropriate for a coach to over-assert their authority over their student with regard to non-fencing related issues.

(just my $0.02).

-p

[Allen Evans]

Coaches are more than dog walkers.

Coaches are less than parents.

The composition of the territory in between is up to the coach and to the student.

Allen Evans

[passata_sotto]

As a parent, I feel that I turn over a limited amount of parental authority to my sons' fencing coach at both the club and at tournaments. What would the alternative be? - to have parents for every fencer there at all times and participating in the instruction, which, in fencing, goes beyond technique. What about sportsmanship and manners? From watching some fencers and/or their coaches these may not be part of the instruction but in our club they are. I think that it partly is centred around the motivation of the coach and the ultimate goals. Is it just a sport or are there life lessons that can be derived from fencing and a good coach.

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

The role changes with the people.

A 30 year old coach and a 45 year old student will interact much differently then a 30 year old coach and a 12 year old student.

The older your students get, the less they tend to look to the coach as a role model/life mentor.

I believe that with younger students, the coach has an OBLIGATION to develope not just the fencing abilities, but the character and integrity of the fencer.

[LeftHanded]

The coaches and teachers that made the biggest impact on me were the ones that didn't stop when the door to their room or their class or thier club closed. The ones that coached in the sport and in life are the ones that I remember.

I think that a coach has to be able to teach you something. If you can't learn anything then why are you there? They can't just let things slide they have to be the ones that will praise a job well done but will be quick to tell you if did something wrong or incorrectly.