Stankovich pushes for standards

By John Kovach

An Austintown native is spearheading the charge to increase the “psychosocial” requirements, standards and quality of athletic coaching from grades 7-12 across America.

Dr. Chris Stankovich, a sports psychologist in Columbus, has been instrumental in persuading the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) to add to their “Fundamentals of Coaching” course last June.

The course has been adopted by 42 of its member institutions, including the Ohio High School Athletic Association.

“My goal for the better part of the last last 10 years has been to revamp our training model that we use to train adults [as coaches],“ said Stankovich, a graduate of Austintown Fitch High and Ohio State University who has become an nationally-recognized expert in the subject.

“It has been a volunteer effort on my part.”

“I wanted coaches to have more psychosocial training in ethics and morals to ensure appropriate and healthy relationships between coaches and students, as well as become better prepared for the issues they are likely to face while coaching kids.”

Stankovich said almost all current coaching certification programs, including Ohio’s, “are geared exclusively toward first-aid training rather than ethics and appropriate coaching behavior.

“There is a lack of positive role-models and there have been a number of inappropriate and unhealthy relationships between coaches and students athletes,” he said.

Stankovich pointed out that more than 65 percent of all high school coaches today in all sports throughout the state are not licensed teachers, nor have they ever been formally or informally trained to work with kids in any kind of a teaching/coaching capacity.

“Instead, schools hire mostly voluntary lay people out of desperate need who have not met any certified requirements for the job. And most coaching candidates only have to undergo a background check and take a first aid course to get hired to coach our kids,” he said.

Stankovich, who isn’t aware of any states that require psychosocial training, blamed part of the shortfall of certified teacher-coaches on a combination of low pay for coaches coupled by an increase in the number of angry, hostile, and sometimes even physically-aggressive parents with unrealistic expectations for their children who play sports.

But budgetary restraints also have been a big factor in schools lowering the standards and requirements for coaching candidates just to afford to staff programs.

Stankovich said he had urged the OHSAA to upgrade the education, training, standards and requirements for coaches for about 10 years, and wasn’t getting anywhere.

“The NFHS had been getting an increasing number of complaints about substandard coaching requirements, and decided to create the ‘Fundamentals of Coaching’ course, which the OHSAA agreed to adopt as a standard policy along with other state associations,” Stankovich said.

In fact, the NFHS even asked Stankovich to audit the “Fundamentals of Coaching” course.

While it was a great start, it still was deficient in addressing his core psychosocial concerns.

Consequently, he decided to continue his effort to get the NFHS and the OHSAA to adopt his beliefs, and the NFHS has been very receptive.

The NFHS also has hired Stankovich to write four articles for its publication, High School Today, on the pyschosocial issues he would like to see incorporated in the course.

The first of these articles, “Performance-enhancing Supplements-Threats to Wellness and Safety,” already has been published. The other three — “Youth Sport Burnout,” “Sport Retirement Transition Issues for Student Athletes,” and “Healthy Boundaries Between Coaches [and Student-Athletes]” will be published sometime in 2009.

Meanwhile, Stankovich still is trying to persuade the OHSAA to adopt his ideas, but that remains a work in progress.

Last August, he contacted several state legislators to get them involved to try to persuade the OHSAA to upgrade coaching standards.

Shortly after, Stankovich and the staffs of Ohio state Sen. Steve Stivers (R-Columbus) and Ohio state Rep. Larry Flowers (R-Canal Winchester) met with the OHSAA to discuss adding additional coach training.

“We’re hoping that no law is required to get this done,” said Shawn Busken, a legislative aide to Stivers,” in an article in USA Today. “There’s no draft of legislation, but we see that a lack of training is available.”

However, OHSAA Commissioner Daniel Ross told USA Today that the state has adopted the coaching course, and that this “isn’t the best time to add additional requirements for coaches.”

“We have to learn to crawl before we can walk,” Ross said. “This [the coaching course] is a big first step.”

kovach@vindy.com