Coaching courses show students value of leadership skills

Behind every good team is a good coach.

But being a coach is more than producing a winning record - it's creating team chemistry and making the most of the available talent, the basis of a pair of courses offered by the UA Physical Education department.

"Certainly characteristics associated with successful leaders of any kind are also associated with successful coaches," said UA professor Scott Watson, who teaches the Principles of Coaching (PE 385) and Sports in Contemporary Society (PE 410). "One of them is self-confidence, having confidence that you can do something, that you can make a difference, that you are capable of succeeding and meeting your goals."

It's been a year since John Mackovic was fired from his position as head coach of the UA football team, and Watson said that confidence appears to be the most dramatic difference between Arizona's 2003 and current football programs.

"I think that you see that clearly in Mike Stoops this year, his self-confidence is very high," Watson added. "(It is necessary to have) the ability to influence other people to accept your perspective or your vision for the organization, in this case for the team. Again he's very successful in that - convincing players to follow him in terms of his self-confidence."

"I think in order to be a good coach you have to be very confident in yourself and in your ability to teach athletes the game," agreed volleyball's junior middle blocker Bre Ladd. "Obviously you have to be knowledgeable. I think it's really important that you hold your players accountable, but at the same time you have to have some sort of sincerity and caring for them."

Watson, who received a graduate degree from the department of sport studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a law degree from the UA, is in his eighth year teaching students how to be successful coaches and role models for Arizona's department of physical education.

"I'm mainly interested in sport, not coming to it as a coach, but just interested in the study of sport," he added. "As a student, I got a graduate degree in the study of sport, looking at sport from social, historical, psychological and philosophical perspectives and studying different aspects of sport from those different perspectives.

"Another of the characteristics that seems to be associated with successful coaches is the ability to make decisions," Watson said. "If you can make a decision and be comfortable with making decisions, that's something that might indicate potential success as a coach. I think communication skills are very important in successful coaches - that they're able to communicate with other people."

UA head volleyball coach Dave Rubio, in his 13th season at UA, could not agree more.

"I think that the foundation of a coach has to be a very good communicator," Rubio said, who is 17 wins away from being the winningest coach in Arizona volleyball history. "Your student athletes need to be your number-one priority, not winning. I think that's the number one thing. For coaching women, it's all about building a trusting relationship with them and showing that you care about them. I think once you've established that as a foundation, anything is possible from there. You can develop their skills, work on their mental toughness and competitiveness."

"Many of the students in the class have been athletes of some sort, whether or not they were on one of the university teams," said Watson, who said he has taught former UA soccer goalkeeper Natalie Juarez and former softball catcher Mackenzie Vandergeest, among other current UA athletes.

"One of the good things about the classes is that they can bring a lot of their experiences to the class and talk about their own experiences - how they got involved in sport, what experiences they've had with coaches, whether or not theories that sociologists have about sport seem to match their experiences, insights they have into the different topics."