Coach Takano wrote a great post about our new USA-W Coaching Education Director (CED), Mike Conroy. From personal experience, I know that both these Coaches are amazing and have a passion to help others in this sport. I’ve had the pleasure to bounce ideas and be coached by both Conroy and Takano all the way out from Idaho and California. So if you’re every around there parts, I’d definitely recommend a visit to their clubs.
Here’s the posting:
USA-W’s New Coaching Coordinator
“Some people are probably wondering why we only have one male and two female athletes representing the USA in the weightlifting competition at the upcoming London Olympics. Part of the reason has been the lack of continuity at certain key positions over the decade or more. We are currently without a CEO, and whoever gets the position will be the 5th or 6thsince the 2000 Sydney Games. We also seem to have trouble keeping a Coaching Education Director or High Performance Director. Basically USA Weightlifting has been in disarray for the better part of the last three quandrennia.
Although the primary and paramount goal of the federation should be to put athletes on the medal stand at the Games, a large part of the effort needs to be directed at coaching education since the coaches are the ones who are involved with athlete development for quad after quad. They are the ones who are finding the talent, developing it and fine-tuning it for international competition. They need to be as competent as possible.
Although for years many people have pointed to the pharmaceutical gap as the primary culprit in the decline of USA weightlifting fortunes, there is an even bigger gap in coaching education. Countries that prioritize weightlifting do so by hiring university trained professional coaches on a scale sufficient enough to impact the development of their national teams. We have done that by hiring Zygmunt Smalcerz, the former national coach of Poland, who is a professionally trained weightlifting coach. We, however, need more coaches of his caliber if we are to sufficiently develop the talents of gifted athletes we might encounter across this wide land.
At this point it is highly doubtful that any university in this country will put together a rigorous curriculum for coaching education, so it is up to each of the national governing bodies to develop their own coaching education program.
USA weightlifting recently announced the hiring of Mike Conroy as its new CED. I applaud the choice. I’ve known Mike for 25 years and was always impressed with his curiosity about coaching and his willingness to dig into the science and mathematics involved in this endeavor. Moreover Mike has been a secondary teacher and I think that hiring an educator for this position has got to have some benefits. A teacher is someone who has had to have some thoughts about the field of pedagogy. Developing a coaching education program is something that should be done by a professional.
The usually jovial Mike Conroy looks serious here as he embarks on his role as USAW CED.
We will be having a coaches meeting at Colorado Springs in August, if it isn’t burned down. We’ll get a chance to meet Mike in his new position and see how he plans to upgrade this very important aspect of our national program.”