A record number of coaches across the spectrum of sport have responded to the call of the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA) in respect of a high-level coaches’ course, which will be delivered by Panam Sports in partnership with the Canadian Coaching Association.

Over 70 stakeholders have registered their commitment to pursue the course, which will cover Coaching Philosophy and Leadership, Advanced Performance Planning, Energy Systems and Physiology, Strength and Conditioning, Sports Psychology, Advanced Injury Prevention and Recovery Strategies and High Performance Analysis.

The call by the JOA is in keeping with its developmental strategies of which education and training are critical elements. In a communique to member federations and stakeholders concerning the course, JOA President Christopher Samuda made clear that the game plan of the governing body is “to build capacity for today’s feats and tomorrow’s legacies”.

The course is part of a suite of educational courses that the apex body is continuing to make accessible to stakeholders and supports the Advanced Sports Management Course (ASMC) which the JOA will, for the first time in its history, make available to a cohort in the Diaspora.

There has never been a response of this magnitude by the sporting fraternity to any of its coaching initiatives.

In applauding the tremendous response to the coaches’ course and the ASMC — which continues to be oversubscribed — JOA Secretary General/CEO Ryan Foste, said: “Our members and stakeholders have not only seized the JOA’s vision of the value of education and training, but have embraced the known principle that an investment in education pays the best dividends in your working life and is your pension in your twilight years.”

The national association for Olympic and non-Olympic sports is driven in creating and investing in lifelong skills and knowledge-based and technically equipped stakeholders.

Samuda, in commenting on the strategic direction of JOA, stated: “The creation of a sport industry demands a physical and socio-economic infrastructure that is based on viable investments in the human capital and not on handouts, for the latter creates dependency while the former promotes independence and mastery.”

Mastery, in the various disciplines of sport, is the business of the JOA which quite recently also made two calls for opportunities in pursuing master’s degrees. The Master of Arts (MA), a postgraduate degree in sports, ethics and integrity, and the Master of Sport Administration (MSP), a postgraduate degree in organisational management, sport marketing and research, are both tenable at international universities.

They will inaugurate an initiative which the JOA has branded ‘Olympic EduPower’ that will provide master’s and doctoral educational opportunities for members and stakeholders in empowering them.

“If sport is become a sustainable business then the mind must first have and make an educated appointment with destiny, which the body will then be conditioned to keep it,” said Samuda.

Reflecting on Foster’s comment last month when announcing that the JOA’s pioneering Internship Programme, Samuda said it “is all about self-actualisation and a personal call to own your future in sport”.

The Internship Programme is currently underway at Olympic Manor, the headquarters of the JOA.

The JOA will create Olympic history locally, and arguably globally, when later this year it makes its Internship Programme available to Jamaicans in the Diaspora. It will also in the second quarter of this year, through its educational ‘Stamina’ forum series roll-out, in collaboration with international federations, customised courses for administrators and coaches as part of its investment in education.