Coaching and Care of Athletes

THE GENESIS OF COACHING Laurie Edwards in I 920 and I 92 I, and in those years they won the Public Schools Athletic Challenge Cup. Edwards also had charge of the Nottingham University athletes in I920, and in that year they won the championship of the British universities. Since then Kershaw has shown at Manchester what even a part-time coach can do to bring his charges to the forefront of first-class competition. In Great Britain we have not as yet any head coach, such as is appointed in every other country taking part in the Olympic Games. Nor have 'all our universities, nor any of our schools, a professional coach of their own. For some reason British opinion seems to be against the employment of foreign or other pro– fessional coaches. Until this prejudice is broken down we shall continue to lose at the Olympic Games and to fare poorly in lesser forms of international competition. But since things are as they are, an English Summer School for Athletes has been instituted at Loughborough College, Leicester, in the hope of producing worthy amateur instructors. At this school some hundreds of amateur coaches are instructed annually, in order that they may return to their units of the Fighting Ser– vices or their schools or their clubs and disseminate knowledge of athletic lore. , There is now, also, the Loughborough College School of Ath– letics, Games, and Physical Education for the training of profes– sional instructors. 35