NSCAA Director of Coaching Diploma

I recently took the NSCAA Director of Coaching Diploma and enjoyed the 2.5 days of intensive instruction very, very much. The course is full of information and the coaches, both the instructors and the course participants, have a lot of valuable information and perspectives to share. The DOC course is meant for those coaches who want to move into a position of running an organization. The DOC either reports to an Executive Director or to the Board.

At sign in we all received an NSCAA t-shirt, a manual and a game management notebook. We also had a social on Saturday night at a local restaurant where some of the groups presented information based on the lectures during the day.

The course schedule was extremely full – a little like drinking out of a fire hose:

Friday 5:45 to 9:45

1. Registration
2. Introduction
3. Defining the Entity
4. Ethical and Legal Issues
5. Long Term Player Development

Summary: Lots of great information and we went longer than the 9:45 end time. Everyone was extremely interested, asked great questions and I think we could have gone another couple of hours with discussion if nobody noticed the time.

Saturday 8:00 am to 9:00 pm

1. Learning Styles [of the players]
2. Defining the position
3. Business Aspects of Club Management
4. Discussion of Contemporary Club Issues
5. Developing a Mental Skills Program
6. Hiring, Developing, and Evaluating Staff
7. Maximizing Practice for Player Development
8. Discussion Presentations at Social

Sunday 8:00 am to 2:45 pm

1. Developing a Club Culture
2. Management of Club Components
3. Developing Positive Relationships with Parents
4. Global Academies

As you can see, the course is chalk full of information with just enough time to get the gist and enough information to be able to dive deeper. The good thing is that all of the instructors sent us their presentations and contact information so we could follow-up with them should we need or want clarification. The instructors for our course were Bill Steffen, Andrew Donnery, and Phil Wright.

As a parent and a soccer coach it was great to be able to interact with current DOCs who were taking the course and those coaches that were preparing themselves to become DOCs in the future. We had about 50 participants, which was the largest DOC turnout ever for an NSCAA DOC course. The conversations I participated in with my fellow coaches and overheard were encouraging for the parents and players that will be playing soccer in the future. These guys, and I say guys because no women were in the course, were talking about what is best for the kids, what is best for their clubs. They have their heads in the right place. I hope the Boards filled with parents and the parents that want their players to be magically great don’t wear them down and drive them into becoming cynical DOC zombies. From this course and meeting the people taking it, our youth will be in good hands… U.S. Soccer, their clubs and the players will be better for hiring us.

Each session was filled with great information and would rival many courses that I’ve taken at UC Berkeley while getting my degree or as an M&A Analyst getting training at JPMorgan. Very well done NSCAA.