New Student Concentration Area To Expand Coaching Knowledge

The Department of Health and Kinesiology will offer a new online coaching track concentration this fall. Under the direction of Clinical Associate Professor Dr. Paul Keiper, the new concentration area, will give students advanced coaching education.

The coaching track concentration area will tie into the current Sport Management master’s degree plan and will focus on various concentration areas within coaching.

“The idea here is to not train coaches, but to elevate the knowledge base of what an existing coach already has,” said Sport Management Division Chair Dr. Matt Walker. “We hope that it will give master’s students more insight on sport psychology, sport ethics, bio performance and more performance training type concepts.”

Dr. Walker’s hopes remain high, believing that students will walk away with a more rigorous and in-depth curriculum. In order to provide the most well rounded program available, The Department of Health and Kinesiology conducted a widespread recruitment effort.

“Essentially, we’ve recruited outside of Texas A&M and have worked with others who are knowledgeable and have trained with this education,” Dr. Walker said. “We anticipate drawing from a very large pool of individuals.”

The concentration area will be directed to existing coaches who will take the e-MS program while still coaching. The areas that are to be taught came from topic discussions between faculty members and online master’s students. Dr. Keiper said that the developmental design stages fell into place.

“About 30 percent of our online master’s students are starting to be teachers and coaches, so we started to reach out to them as well as other coaches to see if this would be a level of interest to them. All of them said a resounding ‘yes’,” said Dr. Keiper.

Dr. Keiper stated that the sport psychology and sport ethics portions of the concentration area will consist of contemporary issues that face coaches and students including: gamesmanship versus sportsmanship, steroid use, integrity, and cheating. He believes the concentration area will help to better equip master’s students with the skills necessary to coach students in today’s society.

“My hope, as a former coach myself, is that the course will help the coaches to understand themselves and their athletes,” Dr. Keiper said. “A better understanding on both sides, will enhance athletics for those participating in them.”