Coaching Standards

Are you looking to get involved with lacrosse as a coach? Amazing!

We've made the process as easy and barrier free as possible so you can move from desire to bench-boss, assistant coach, or gate-swinger in no time. To get you familiar with the steps, check out how to become a lacrosse coach, which takes you from creating your NCCP number at coach.ca in step 1, to registering for a clinic in your area in step 3 - concept to coach just like that!

Coaching Certification Levels

NOTES:

Head Coaches and Assistant Coaches will be held to the same standard at ALL levels

If you completed a course last year at the Competitive Introduction level, THEN YOU MUST COMPLETE YOUR COACH WORKBOOK THROUGH YOUR ONLINE COACHING ACCOUNT BY MARCH 31, OR YOU WILL HAVE TO TAKE THE COURSE AGAIN. Due to the volume of workbooks that are submitted each year, it is advisable to complete and submit your online workbook by September 1st of the year you took the clinic to allow enough time for marking before the next season.

There are three levels of Certification for all courses:

• In Training
  • means you have completed pre-clinic and/ or clinic and awaiting attendance to be marked
• Trained
  • means you have completed the workbook online ( if applicable) following the clinic and it has been reviewed and approved; for Community Initiation and effective 2015 for Community Development, you will receive trained status after completion of the appropriate clinic and attendance is marked.
• Certified
  • means that in addition to completing the workbook, you have had an ‘in person‘ assessment by a Master Facilitator, and have completed the ‘Making Ethical Decisions‘ online test through the Coaching Association of Canada.( Competitive Introduction level only )

First year coach may be ‘In Training‘ (this means you have taken the clinic and are awaiting attendance to be marked ).

• U7/U9 levels, you only need to complete the Community development clinic
• U11/U13 levels, you need to complete the Community Development clinic
• U15/U17, you must complete the Community Development clinic/level first before you take the Competitive Introduction level; however, you cannot take both these levels in the same year, so you would have to start by taking the Community Development clinic;

Second year (and beyond) coach must be ‘Trained‘ status(this means you took the clinic with attendance marked, and completed any applicable workbook online and it has been successfully corrected)

TEAM ALBERTA coach must be ‘Certified‘ which means that a Master Learning Facilitator has completed an ‘in person‘ review and assessment of the coach and they have passed this successfully.

Responsible Coaching

The ALA has taken the pledge and is now a proud champion of the Responsible Coaching Movement!

By making this pledge, the ALA is showing our commitment to implementing supportive policies and processes that ensure the safety and protection of our athletes and coaches, and provide our coaches with the tools and training necessary to model ethical behavior.

The Responsible Coaching Movement (RCM) is a multi-phase. system-wide movement coordinated by the Coaching Association of Canada and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport that has the potential to affect all sports organizations and coaches in a positive way.

The first phase of the RCM focuses on three key areas:

• Rule-of-Two: The Rule-of-Two serves to protect Minor athletes from potentially vulnerable situations by ensuring that more than one adult is present at all times. Vulnerable situations can include closed doors meetings, travel, and training environments.
• Background Screening: The background screening process involves using a number of different tools to ensure coaches meet the necessary security requirements to coach athletes. These tools include comprehensive job postings, criminal record checks, interviews, and reference checks.
• Respect and Ethics Training: Increasing coaches ethical conduct and behavior toward athletes requires that coaches be trained to understand what it means to act ethically. This training includes the Make Ethical Decisions module within the National Coaching Certification Program (CAC) but there are many.

With the support of the Coaching Association of Canada (CAC), the ALA will be actively reviewing current policies and procedures to ensure they align with the recommendations and guidelines of the RCM.

Working closely with our members and clubs, we will identify realistic ways and means to entrench the Responsible Coaching Movement across our sport and enhance the safety of our athletes and the ethical conduct of our coaches.