Strength training someone and coaching them is not the same thing.
Results must be part of qualification… but at what level? Who decides? Who cares if the ‘decider’ has no decision making capacity related to selection or funding or employment?
Whatever is said, getting Gold Medals is never “easy”, even in a perepheral capacity.
This certification program has five levels. If you look on the website, you’ll see there are coaches listed in all five levels. The funny thing is that there is only a Level I manual available! How did these coaches earn Levels II, III, IV and V certifications when no exam preparation materials even exist? What a joke!
I didn’t really mean easy in the sense that they would just walk in and take the gold but 2002 had 2 guys that he worked with off-season so I assume he could take credit for their gold medal and say he coached a 2 guys to olympic gold.
My main inspiration in aspiring to coach is my own high school coach. I want to be successful like him and in the same way he is successful.
My High School coach has 3 Central Coast Section cross country titles, 4 HS all americans, and dozens of league champions. He currently has 5 athletes competing at the NCAA division one level, and one of them is working to become part of the olympic distance project in monterey sponsered by I think asics? 90% of the athletes he trains improve and I would say out of the 40-50 kids he works with during a regular season 1 gets injured badly enough to miss a race, and maybe 1 missing a few. As a high school coach, “performance” wise this guy has delivered. For the past four years since he transfered to my HS he has produced League championships in the frosh-soph/JV/Varsity level in both track and cross country. Oh did I mention he’s 32 and has been coaching for only 6 years?
But that’s not why I respect him. He has a solid character, stronger morals than i have body odor, and is devoted to his family. He helps children, teenage children to become young men. He takes guys that have no life skills. Guys that don’t know how to prioritize, don’t know about dedication, hard work, goals and all that other balony taken for granted in our field of work and helps them become better. Better people. Better Sons. Better Students. Better athletes.
I want to be successful like that. I don’t care about coaching at the college level. Those kids don’t need “help”. You’ll never teach a college runner how to tie their shoes. You’re working with already developed kids. pre-packaged athletes, what you get is what you got. In high school you can take a group of kids that have done nothing but kick around soccer balls, and hung out with the homies, and teach them about brotherhood, respect, and life goals while at the same time building a regionally competitive cross country team!
My best buddy was a vato-gangster wanna-be. Now after being all CCS in cross country for 2 years in a row, is running a local community college and is thinking about transferring up north to sacramento with me. I recently hung out with my buddy in the down-town ghetto with his gangster buddies. We ate at burger king and they already knew that runner’s weren’t supposed to eat there they were like “hey! You’re a runner man you aren’t supposed to eat that man, give it up!” I told them to bugger off, but that situation realized the impact my Coach had had on these kids lives. Even periferally he had effected the neighberhood.
I don’t know how to wrap this up but I don’t think that coaching “elites” or having general “improvement without injury” from a group of athletes really determines the success of a coach. I am happier when my teammate gets accepted into college than when he gets a PR (though the two sometimes go hand in hand =). I think that sport is supplementary or even complimentary to life. Now some, some do have the talents to become professional athletes, but I contest that it is a greater success to help 10-15 young men become motivated and capeable young adults than to send one guy out of a hundred thousand to the big leagues.
(Out of my graduating class of those runners who were on the track/cross country team for four years 5/7 of us are attending post-secondary school, and all of us graduated. 
)
Hmm.
Consider a career in writing as well as coaching.
My momma dun learned me how ta wrote.