Ten coaches from four Caribbean islands started the three-day intensive World Squash Federation (WSF) Level 1 Coaching Course, which is sponsored by the Federation of Pan American Squash.

One coach each from The Bahamas, St Vincent and the Grenadines and the Caymans Islands, and seven from host country Jamaica, began the first session Friday morning at the Liguanea Club in New Kingston – the home of the Jamaica Squash Association (JSA). Their objective is to increase the number of certified coaches in the region to fill the void for their services.

Experienced Head Squash Pro Colin White is the facilitator for the course. He is a WSF and European Squash Federation (ESF) Level 1, 2 and 3 certified coach and tutor for many years. He has taught and coached the game of squash in many countries including the US, Austria, Hungary and Russia.

White expects that the trainee coaches will take away a number things away from the course to help them to become better coaches.

“I hope by the end of the weekend we have a group of coaches not just successful in passing but energized to help squash in the Caribbean,” he said.

He outlined the details of what will be taught during the three days.

“The course boils down to four questions and three words. I know it does not sound like much but getting them to know the what, why, when and how. If they are asking those four questions to try and make sure that the student in front of them understands that it’s not just how you hit it, so it’s not just a shot you are hitting, it’s why you hit that shot, when you hit that shot because squash is an open skill sport. So it’s trying to teach them those solutions in an open skills,” White said.

“And the three words are perception, decision and action. So a lot of times you are just hitting a ball, that’s the action part. So if I am feeding the ball to my student and they are just hitting the ball back to me that’s just action, action, action, action,” he continued. “I am not teaching them how to read the situation, how to understand the situation that if I am in that position that ball’s gotta go to that area so that’s where perception comes in, and then from that the more information I have from perception, the earlier I get to the ball, the more time I have to make better decisions, the more options I have for action. If we just teach action, we’re missing a big part of (what they should know), some of that happens by accident. We’ve got to be a little more explicit to get the coaches to understand those things.”

President of the Jamaica Squash Association Karen Anderson was on location for the start of the course. She welcomed it while saying that there was a great demand for it from persons across the region who wanted to standardize and regularize their coaching practices and get the proper information as to how to coach.

The three-day WSF Level 1 Coaching Course sponsored by the Federation of Pan American Squash continues on Saturday in the Lignum Vitae Room at the Liguanea Club and will end on Sunday afternoon.