Senior coach Ross Lyon addresses the St Kilda Football Club players in the Australian Football League prior to the 2009 AFL Grand Final

In sports, a coach is a person involved in the direction, instruction and training of the operations of a sports team or of individual sportspeople. Also a sport teacher.

Staff[link]

A coach, particularly in a major operation, is traditionally supported by one or more assistant coaches. The staff may include coordinators, strength and fitness specialists, and trainers.

Coaching in association football[link]

In football, the duties of a coach can vary depending on the level they are coaching at and the country they are coaching in, amongst others. In youth football, the primary objective of a coach is to aid players in the development of their technical skills, with emphasis on the enjoyment and fair play of the game rather than physical or tactical development.^[1] In recent decades, efforts have been made by governing bodies in various countries to overhaul their coaching structures at youth level with the aim of encouraging coaches to put player development and enjoyment ahead of winning matches.

In professional football, the role of the coach or trainer is limited to the training and development of a club's "first team" in most countries. The coach is aided by a number of assistant coaches, one of which carries the responsibility for the training and preparation of the goalkeepers. The coach is also assisted by medical staff and athletic preparators.

The medium to long term strategy of a football club, with regard to transfer policies, youth development and other sporting matters, is not the business of a coach in most footballing countries. The presence of a sporting director is designed to give the medium term development of a club the full attention of one professional, allowing the coach to focus on improving and producing performances from the players under their charge.^[2] The system also provides a certain level of protection against overspending on players in search of instant success. In British football, the director of a professional football team is more commonly awarded the position of manager, a role that combines the duties of coach and sporting director.

The responsibilities of a European football manager tend to be divided up in North American professional sports, where the teams usually have a separate general manager and head coach, although occasionally a person may fill both roles of general manager and head coach. While the first team coach in football is usually an assistant to the manager who actually holds the real power, the American style general manager and head coach have clearly distinct areas of responsibilities. For example, a typical European football manager would have the final say on player lineups and contract negotiations, while in American sports these duties would be handled separately by the head coach and general manager, respectively. Also sports can be changed due to a coach deciding on the game.

Coaching in baseball[link]

Baseball, at least at the professional level in North America, is unique in that the individual who heads the coaching staff does not use the title of "head coach", but is instead called the field manager. Baseball "coaches" at that level are members of the coaching staff under the overall supervision of the manager, with each coach having a specialized role. The baseball field manager is essentially equivalent to head coaches in other American professional sports leagues; player transactions are handled by the general manager. The term "manager" used without qualification almost always refers to the field manager, while the general manager is often called the GM.

At amateur levels, the terminology is more similar to that of other sports. The person known as the "manager" in professional leagues is generally called the "head coach" in amateur leagues; this terminology is standard in U.S. college baseball.

Coaching in the United States[link]

All major U.S. collegiate sports have associations for their coaches to engage in professional development activities, but professional coaches tend to have less formal associations, and have never developed into a group resembling a union in the way that athletic players in many leagues have.

Many coaching contracts allow the termination of the coach with little notice and without specific cause, usually in the case of high-profile coaches with the payment of a financial settlement. U.S. collegiate coaching contracts require termination without the payment of a settlement if the coach is found to be in serious violation of named rules, usually with regard to the recruiting or retention of players in violation of amateur status.

Coaching is a very fickle profession, and a reversal of the team's fortune often finds last year's "Coach of the Year" to be seeking employment in the next.

Many coaches are former players of the sport themselves, and coaches of professional sports teams are sometimes retired players.

On some teams, the principal coach (usually referred to as the head coach) has little to do with the development of details such as techniques of play or placement of players on the playing surface, leaving this to assistants while concentrating on larger issues such as recruitment and organizational development.

Successful coaches often become as well or even better-known than the athletes they coach, and in recent years have come to command high salaries and have agents of their own to negotiate their contracts with the teams. Often the head coach of a well-known team has his or her own radio and television programs and becomes the primary "face" associated with the team.

Preparation for coaching[link]

Coaching courses and training seminars are increasingly available. One important role of coaches, especially youth coaches, is establishing safety for school-age athletes. This requires knowledge of CPR, prevention of dehydration, and following current concussion management guidelines.^[3][4]

See also[link]

References[link]

Look up coach in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Coach may refer to:

Transportation[link]

• Coach (bus), an automotive vehicle for long-distance travel
  • Coach (scheduled transport), the mode of transport using such vehicles
  • Coach USA, an American bus transport company
  • Coach Canada, a Canadian bus transport company
• Coach (carriage), a horse-drawn vehicle
• Coach (rail), a type of passenger car
• Coach class, a category of transport seating
• Hearse, a vehicle for carrying the deceased

Guidance/instruction[link]

• Coaching, the practice of guiding an individual through a process
• Coach (sport), a director of athletes' training and activities

Media and entertainment[link]

• Coach (TV series)
• Coach (comics)
• The Coach, a wrestling personality
• Coach Ernie Pantusso, a Cheers character
• Benjamin "Coach" Wade, a Survivor contestant
• Coach, a film starring Cathy Lee Crosby
• Coach, a Left 4 Dead 2 character

Other uses[link]

• Coach, Inc., a leather goods company known for its handbags

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Sport in childhood. Association football, shown above, is a team sport which also provides opportunities to nurture physical fitness and social interaction skills.

Sport (or, in the United States, sports) is all forms of competitive physical activity which,^[1] through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants.^[2] Hundreds of sports exist, from those requiring only two participants, through to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either in teams or competing as individuals.

Sport is generally recognised as activities which are based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with the largest major competitions such as the Olympic Games admitting only sports meeting this definition,^[3] and other organisations such as the Council of Europe using definitions precluding activities without a physical element from classification as sports.^[2] However, a number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports. The International Olympic Committee (through ARISF) recognises both chess and bridge as bona fide sports, and SportAccord, the international sports federation association, recognises five non-physical sports,^[4][5] although limits the amount of mind games which can be admitted as sports.^[1]

Sports are usually governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair competition, and allow consistent adjudication of the winner. Winning can by determined by physical events such as scoring goals or crossing a line first, or by the determination of judges who are scoring elements of the sporting performance, including objective or subjective measures such as technical performance or artistic impression.

In organised sport, records of performance are often kept, and for popular sports, this information may be widely announced or reported in sport news. In addition, sport is a major source of entertainment for non-participants, with spectator sports drawing large crowds to venues, and reaching wider audiences through sports broadcasting.

Meaning and usage[link]

Etymology[link]

Look up sport in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

"Sport" comes from the Old French desport meaning "leisure", with the oldest definition in English from around 1300 being "anything humans find amusing or entertaining".^[6]

The French word for sport is based on the Persian word bord, meaning "winning" or "win".^{[citation needed]} The Chinese term for sport, tiyu (体育; 體育) connotes physical training. The modern Greek term for sport is Αθλητισμός (athlitismos), directly cognate with the English terms "athlete" and "athleticism".

Other meanings include gambling and events staged for the purpose of gambling; hunting; and games and diversions, including ones that require exercise.^[7] Roget's defines the noun sport as an "activity engaged in for relaxation and amusement" with synonyms including diversion and recreation.^[8]

Nomenclature[link]

The singular term 'sport' is used in most English dialects to decribe the overall concept (e.g. "children taking part in sport"), with 'sports' used to describe multiple activities (e.g. "football and rugby are the most popular sports in England"). American English uses 'sports' for both terms.

Definition[link]

Show Jumping, an equestrian sport

The precise definition of what separates a sport from other leisure activities varies between sources, with no universally agreed definition. The closest to an international agreement on a definition is provided by SportAccord, which is the association for all the largest international sports federations (including association football, american football, cycling, equestrian sports, baseball and more), and is therefore the de facto representative of international sport.

SportAccord uses the following criteria, determining that a sport should:^[1]

• have an element of competition
• be in no way harmful to any living creature
• not rely on equipment provided by a single supplier (excluding proprietary games such as arena football)
• not rely on any 'luck' element specifically designed in to the sport

They also recognise that sport can be primarily physical (such as rugby or athletics), primarily mind (such as chess or go), predominantly motorised (such as Formula 1 or powerboating), primarily co-ordination (such as billiard sports) or primarily animal supported (such as equestrian sport).^[1]

There has been an increase in the application of the term 'sport' to a wider set of non-physical challenges such as electronic sports, especially due to the large scale of participation and organised competition, but these are not widely recognised by mainstream sports organisations.

Competition[link]

There are opposing views on the necessity of competition as a defining element of a sport, with almost all professional sport involving competition, and governing bodies requiring competition as a prerequisite of recognition by the IOC or SportAccord.^[1]

Other bodies advocate widening the definition of sport to include all physical activity. For instance, the Council of Europe include all forms of physical exercise, including those completed just for fun.

In order to widen participation, and reduce the impact of losing on less able participants, there has been an introduction of non-competitive physical activity to traditionally competitive events such as school sports days, although moves like this are often controversial.^[9][10]

History[link]

Roman bronze reduction of Myron's Discobolos, 2nd century AD.

There are artifacts and structures that suggest that the Chinese engaged in sporting activities as early as 2000 BC.^[11] Gymnastics appears to have been a popular sport in China's ancient past. Monuments to the Pharaohs indicate that a number of sports, including swimming and fishing, were well-developed and regulated several thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt.^[12] Other Egyptian sports included javelin throwing, high jump, and wrestling. Ancient Persian sports such as the traditional Iranian martial art of Zourkhaneh had a close connection to the warfare skills.^[13] Among other sports that originate in ancient Persia are polo and jousting.

Motorized sports have appeared since the advent of the modern age

A wide range of sports were already established by the time of Ancient Greece and the military culture and the development of sports in Greece influenced one another considerably. Sports became such a prominent part of their culture that the Greeks created the Olympic Games, which in ancient times were held every four years in a small village in the Peloponnesus called Olympia.^[14]

Sports have been increasingly organised and regulated from the time of the ancient Olympics up to the present century. Industrialisation has brought increased leisure time to the citizens of developed and developing countries, leading to more time for citizens to attend and follow spectator sports, greater participation in athletic activities, and increased accessibility. These trends continued with the advent of mass media and global communication. Professionalism became prevalent, further adding to the increase in sport's popularity, as sports fans began following the exploits of professional athletes through radio, television, and the internet—all while enjoying the exercise and competition associated with amateur participation in sports.

Fair play[link]

Sportsmanship[link]

Sportsmanship is an attitude that strives for fair play, courtesy toward teammates and opponents, ethical behaviour and integrity, and grace in victory or defeat.^[15][16][17]

Sportsmanship expresses an aspiration or ethos that the activity will be enjoyed for its own sake. The well-known sentiment by sports journalist Grantland Rice, that it's “not that you won or lost but how you played the game", and the modern Olympic creed expressed by its founder Pierre de Coubertin: "The most important thing... is not winning but taking part" are typical expressions of this sentiment.

Cheating[link]

Key tenets of sport include that the result should not be predetermined, and that both sides should have equal opportunity to win. Rules are in place to ensure that fair play to occur, but participants can break these rules in order to gain advantage.

Participants may choose to cheat in order to satisfy their desire to win, or in order to achieve an ulterior motive. The widespread existence of gambling on the results of sports fixtures creates the motivation for match fixing, where a participant or participants deliberately work to ensure a given outcome.

Doping and drugs[link]

The competitive nature of sport encourages some participants to attempt to enhance their performance through the use of medicines, or through other means such as increasing the volume of blood in their bodies through artificial means.

All sports recognised by the IOC or SportAccord are required to implement a testing programme, looking for a list of banned drugs, with suspensions or bans being placed on participants who test positive for banned substances.

Violence[link]

Violence in sports involves crossing the line between fair competition and intentional aggressive violence. Athletes, coaches, fans, and parents sometimes unleash violent behaviour on people or property, in misguided shows of loyalty, dominance, anger, or celebration. Rioting or hooliganism are common and ongoing problems at national and international sporting contests.

Participation[link]

Gender participation[link]

This section requires expansion.

Female participation continues to rise alongside the opportunity for involvement and the value of sports for child development and physical fitness. Despite gains during the last three decades, a gap persists in the enrollment figures between male and female players. Female players account for 39% of the total participation in US interscholastic athletics. Gender balance has been accelerating from a 32% increase in 1973–74 to a 63% increase in 1994–95. Hessel (2000)^{[Full citation needed]}.

Youth participation[link]

This section requires expansion.

Youth sports present children with opportunities for fun, socialization, forming peer relationships, physical fitness, and athletic scholarships. Activists for education and the war on drugs encourage youth sports as a means to increase educational participation and to fight the illegal drug trade. According to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the biggest risk for youth sports is death or serious injury including concussion, with the highest risk coming from running, basketball, football, volleyball, soccer, and gymnastics.^[18]

Spectator involvement[link]

Spectators at the 1906 unofficial Olympic Games

The competition element of sport, along with the aesthetic appeal of some sports, result in the popularity of people attending to watch sport being played. This has led to the specific phenomenon of spectator sport.

Both amateur and professional sports attract spectators, both in person at the sport venue, and through broadcast mediums including radio, television and internet broadcast. Both attendance in person and viewing remotely can incur a sometimes substantial charge, such as an entrance ticket, or pay-per-view television broadcast.

It is common for popular sports to attract large broadcast audiences, leading to rival broadcasters bidding large amounts of money for the rights to show certain fixtures. The football World Cup attracts a global television audience of hundreds of millions; the 2006 final alone attracted an estimated worldwide audience of well over 700 million and the 2007 Cricket World Cup attracted about 2.3 Billion worldwide viewers.^{[citation needed]}

In the United States, the championship game of the NFL, the Super Bowl, has become one of the most watched television broadcasts of the year.^{[citation needed]} Super Bowl Sunday is a de facto national holiday in America; the viewership being so great that in 2007 advertising space was reported as being sold at $2.6m for a 30 second slot.^{[citation needed]}

Issues and considerations[link]

Amateur and professional[link]

Modern sports have complex rules and are highly organized.

Sport can be undertaken on an amateur, professional or semi-professional basis, depending on whether particpants are incentivised for participation (usually through payment of a wage or salary).

The popularity of spectator sport as a recreation for non-participants has led to sport becoming a major business in its own right, and this has incentivised a high paying professional sport culture, where high performing participants are rewarded with pay far in excess of average wages, which can run in to millions of dollars.^[19]

Some sports, or individual competitions within a sport, retain a policy of allowing only amateur sport. The Olympic Games started with a principle of amateur competition with those who practiced a sport professionally considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practiced it merely as a hobby.^[20], but following the 1988 games, the IOC decided to make all professional athletes elgible for the Olympics, with only boxing and wrestling still competed on an "amateur" basis, although this revolves around rules, and not payment.

Grassroots sport is a popular phrase which covers the amateur participation in sport at lower levels, normally without pretension towards higher achievement, and is in line with the "sport for all" mentality, where enjoyment is the primary reason for participation.^[21][2]

Technology[link]

Technology plays an important part in modern sport, with it being a necessary part of some sports (such as motorsport), and used in others to improve performance.

Sports science is a widespread academic discipline, and can be applied to areas including athlete performance, such as the use of video analysis to fine tune technique, or to equipment, such as improved running shoes or competitive swimwear.

In order to control the impact of technology on fair play, governing bodies frequently have specific rules designed to control the impact of technical advantage between participants.

Politics[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2010)

Sports and politics can influence each other greatly.

When apartheid was the official policy in South Africa, many sports people, particularly in rugby union, adopted the conscientious approach that they should not appear in competitive sports there. Some feel this was an effective contribution to the eventual demolition of the policy of apartheid, others feel that it may have prolonged and reinforced its worst effects.^[22]

The 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin was an illustration, perhaps best recognised in retrospect, where an ideology was developing which used the event to strengthen its spread through propaganda.

In the history of Ireland, Gaelic sports were connected with cultural nationalism. Until the mid 20th century a person could have been banned from playing Gaelic football, hurling, or other sports administered by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) if she/he played or supported football, or other games seen to be of British origin. Until recently the GAA continued to ban the playing of football and rugby union at Gaelic venues. This ban is still enforced, but was modified to allow football and rugby to be played in Croke Park while Lansdowne Road was redeveloped into Aviva Stadium. Until recently, under Rule 21, the GAA also banned members of the British security forces and members of the RUC from playing Gaelic games, but the advent of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 led to the eventual removal of the ban.

Nationalism is often evident in the pursuit of sports, or in its reporting: people compete in national teams, or commentators and audiences can adopt a partisan view. On occasion, such tensions can lead to violent confrontation among players or spectators within and beyond the sporting venue, as in the Football War. These trends are seen by many as contrary to the fundamental ethos of sports being carried on for its own sake and for the enjoyment of its participants.

A very famous case when sports and politics colided was the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Masked men entered the hotel of the Israeli olympic team and killed many of their men. This was known as the Munich massacre.

See also[link]

Sports and games portal

Find more about Sports on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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• Outline of sports
• List of sportspeople
• List of sports attendance figures
• List of professional sports leagues

Related topics

References[link]

• European Commission (2007), The White Paper on Sport.
• Council of Europe (2001), The Europien sport charter.

Further reading[link]

• The Meaning of Sports by Michael Mandel (PublicAffairs, ISBN 1-58648-252-1).
• Journal of the Philosophy of Sport

Pierre Pagé^[1], also spelled Pierre Page^[2] (born April 30, 1948) is a Canadian professional ice hockey coach and executive. He currently coaches EC Red Bull Salzburg. He is also a former head coach in the National Hockey League (NHL).

Coaching career[link]

Pagé started coaching at the age of 24 with Dalhousie University as assistant coach. He became the head coach the following year, a position he held for seven years. He then coached in the National Hockey League (NHL) for thirteen years, coaching the Minnesota North Stars, Quebec Nordiques, Calgary Flames and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. His career record was 253 wins, 301 losses and 82 ties. He was an assistant coach with the Flames that went to the 1986 Stanley Cup Final, losing to the Montreal Canadiens.^[3] After being dismissed by the Mighty Ducks, and out of hockey for one season, he continued his coaching career in Europe where he has coached in Switzerland (Ambri Piotta), Germany (Berlin Eisbären) and now in Austria. In Berlin, he led the club to its first two championships.

He is currently the Sporting Director and Head Coach of EC Red Bull Salzburg in the Erste Bank Hockey League in Austria. With Pagé behind the bench, the Red Bulls won the championship in 2008 and 2010 and finished second in 2009 in a close series against Klagenfurt. 2010 was the most successful year in the history of the EC Red Bull Salzburg. The team won their international pre-season tournament (Red Bull Salute), the Continental Cup (IIHF European Championship), and the Austrian Championship. Pagé spearheaded the IIDM—International Ice Hockey Development Model—in Salzburg with the Red Bulls, which aims to develop world class athletes with the help of the training facilities provided at the Thalgau training center.

In Quebec, he also held the general manager position from 1991 until 1994. He was the Quebec Nordiques general manager who traded Eric Lindros for Peter Forsberg, Ron Hextall, Steve Duchesne, Mike Ricci, Chris Simon, Kerry Huffman, $15 million and first round draft picks from the Philadelphia Flyers. This transaction was crucial in securing the Nordiques' future, making them a contender after many years without success on the ice.

Currently he is a manager of EC Red Bull Salzburg.^[4]

Career positions[link]

Source:^[3][5]

• 1972 – 1973 - Dalhousie University (CIAU) - Assistant coach
• 1973 – 1980 - Dalhousie University (CIAU) - Head coach
• 1980 – 1982 - Calgary Flames (NHL) - Assistant coach
• 1982 – 1984 - Colorado Flames (CHL) - Head coach
• 1984 – 1985 - Moncton Golden Flames (AHL) - Head coach
• 1985 – 1988 - Calgary Flames (NHL) - Assistant coach
• 1988 – 1990 - Minnesota North Stars (NHL) - Head coach
• 1991 – 1994 - Quebec Nordiques (NHL) - Head coach^[6]
• 1995 – 1997 - Calgary Flames (NHL) - Head coach
• 1997 – 1998 - Anaheim Mighty Ducks (NHL) - Head coach
• 2000 – 2001 - HC Ambrì-Piotta (NLA/SUI) - Head coach
• 2002 – 2007 - Eisbären Berlin (DEL) - Head coach
• 2008 - present - EC Red Bull Salzburg - Head coach

NHL coaching record[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Pierre Pagé's career stats at The Internet Hockey Database
• EC Red Bull Salzburg