Coaching and Care of Athletes

CHAPTER IV THE QUALITIE:S OF A COACH DuRING the last five-and-twenty or thirty years I have met, and in some cases known intimately, many of the world's greatest coaches. Among them have been Jack Moakley, coach to Cornell Uni– versity, U.S .A.; Captain Helge Lovland, winner of the Olympic Pentathlon at Antwerp in 1920, and afterwards Director of Ath– letics to Norway; Jaakko Mikkola, chief coach to Finland, and afterwards head track and field coach to Harvard University, U.S.A. ; Armas Valste, the present Finnish Olympic coach3 Ernie Hjertberg, who established a reputation for himself as a coach in America before acting as chief Olympic coach to both Sweden and Holland; C. Gille, of Sweden, who won the English pole vault championship in 1913, and after the War was an assistant coach in Sweden; Ted Meredith, U.S .A., first in the heyday of his athletic competition as world champion and record-breaker, subsequently as a special newspaper correspondent at the Olympic Games, and finally as coach to one of the Continental nations; W. R. Knox, the Canadian coach, who came to England to pre– pare an Olympic team before the War; H . Geise, ofYale Univer– sity; C. Silfverstrand, who was coach to Norway, Sweden, and Finland at different times; Boyd Comstock, the great American coach, who is now chief coach to the Italian Olympic team; and A. W. Krigsmann, who succeeded Hjertberg as chief Olympic coach to Sweden. I have, of course, also met the American chief Olympic coach, Lawson Robertson, and among English coaches have known intimately the great Sam Mussabini and Alec Nelson, of Cambridge University. Another close personal friend of mine has been Dr Gerald H. Ayres, of Beverly Hills School, ·California, who acted as _chief coach to the Indian Olympic team and the Indian team which took part in the British Empire Games in 1934. All these coaches have had at least one c_haracteristic in common -an all-abounding confidence in themselves. This is a very necessary adjunct if a coach is to inspire confidence in those 52