Botswana Basketball Association (BBA) is on a mission to empower its coaches with a core set of skills to help improve and develop them as leaders.
BBA technical director Shalosh Matsetse says the intention is to equip coaches with new skills to enable them to deal with the ever-changing challenges of modern sport. He says good coaches continuously seek to pick up new abilities that enable them to be better leaders and modify their instructions style to better engage various players.
As part of their strategic plan, the BBA recently introduced a coaching national accreditation system called “Start Coaching.” The system is expected to assist the association monitor and improve the quality of coaching in the country.
Matsetse says the BBA currently has 40 accredited coaches. Of these, 38 are International Basketball Federation (FIBA) Level 1 accredited while the remaining two (2) are Level 2 coaches.
“Our aim of Start Coaching is to introduce our new coaches to teaching new skill and how to break it down, to simplify it for grassroots players and how to correct faulty techniques. The courses will focus on fun games in basketball fundamentals emphasizing on passing, dribbling and shooting,” he explains.
Meanwhile the BBA technical director says the training will also help the association as it implements its long-term athlete development programme. As such, the association’s main targeted beneficiaries will be teacher coaches and academy coaches as most of development programs nationally are run by this target group.
“We believe training grassroots coaches will help us develop technically sound players. Our Coaches Commission along with the Technical Director as the overseer will be responsible for the whole program,” Matsetse says.
The technical director says the association secretariat will in the near future share an expression of interest shared with all stakeholders for all those interested to apply.
While FIBA is yet to announce the dates for training, Matsetse says they are optimistic it will be sometimes this year.
