Course Components
IHSA Coaching Orientation Online Package combines the courses IHSA Coaching Orientation, IHSA state component, and Sport First Aid into one convenient bundle. The IHSA Coaching Orientation course includes excerpts from the Successful Coaching, Sport First Aid, and Coaching [Sport] Technical and Tactical Skills textbooks (delivered as PDFs), video clips, one-year access to the course, Coaching Aids (PDF downloads), the 50-question test and automatic test scoring, IHSA by-laws and separate IHSA by-laws test, certificate of course completion printable from the website, and entry in the National Coaches Registry. The Sport First Aid online course includes the text Sport First Aid and a course-access instruction sheet.

Please note: When you purchase this online course package, you will not have immediate access to your courses. Within two to three business days of placing your order, you will receive course materials from Human Kinetics that include the Sport First Aid textbook and key codes for accessing your courses.

Course Description
IHSA Coaching Orientation Online Package combines the courses IHSA Coaching Orientation, IHSA state component, and Sport First Aid into one convenient bundle. All three courses are necessary to be certified to coach at the scholastic level in Illinois.

IHSA Coaching Orientation
IHSA Coaching Orientation is an online course gleaning material from the Coaching Principles, Sport First Aid, and Coaching [Sport] Technical and Tactical Skills courses. The final unit of the course covers IHSA-specific information on policies, procedures, rules, and reporting requirements.

IHSA Coaching Orientation features less content than Coaching Principles, but its interactive exercises, engaging graphics, poignant video vignettes, and quick pace form a course that is informative, eye-opening, and enjoyable and that will whet coaches’ appetites for more advanced coaching education.

After completing this course, coaches should be able to do the following:

• Develop a personal coaching philosophy and coaching objectives.
• Recognize a coach’s role in helping players develop good character.
• Evaluate and improve communication skills.
• Build team chemistry and manage athletes’ behavior using positive discipline and team rules.
• Work effectively with administrators, officials, parents, and the media.
• Recognize what motivates high school athletes, and explain how to integrate this knowledge with innovative approaches to learning in order to be an effective teacher.
• Create plans for teaching technical and tactical skills, and describe how to teach and practice these skills.
• Identify educational resources for learning about and keeping abreast of sport-specific skills and the latest technological advances in a sport.
• Recognize legal responsibilities related to managing risk.
• Explain responsibilities for ensuring the safety of athletes, including working with other members of the athletic health care team, handling medical and weather emergencies, providing safe athletic facilities and equipment, and coordinating physical exams and medical records.
• Recognize a coach’s role in promoting physical fitness with athletes.
• Develop instructional plans for the season and for individual practices.
• Understand IHSA-specific information on policies, procedures, rules, and reporting requirements.

Sport First Aid
Unlike general first aid courses offered by local organizations, Sport First Aid specifically addresses conditions coaches encounter on the playing field. This fifth edition provides coaches with clear guidelines on what’s expected of them as first responders, as well as action steps for the care and prevention of more than 110 athletic injuries and illnesses.

The course is based on Sport First Aid, Fifth Edition, written by Melinda Flegel, and covers protocols for conducting emergency action steps and providing life support; conducting the physical assessment; administering first aid for bleeding, tissue damage, and unstable injuries; moving an injured athlete; and returning athletes to play. Revisions reflect the latest research and best practices from the American Heart Association and the American Safety and Health Institute.

Guidelines for using cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), the Heimlich maneuver, and automated external defibrillators (AED) have been updated. The course also covers the latest information on treating concussions and heat-related illnesses and preventing and recognizing methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus infections (MRSA). Strategies for greatly reducing athletes’ risk of injury or illness are also featured.

Sport First Aid is a potentially life-saving resource that coaches can rely on to make smart decisions when encountering emergency situations with athletes.

IHSA By-Laws
The IHSA-specific component (unit 7 of the IHSA Coaching Orientation course) tests coaches on IHSA by-laws governing interscholastic sports in Illinois.
 

Audience

Geared toward Illinois high school coaches, serious club coaches, college and university undergraduate students, and advanced coaches at the youth level (those who coach athletes ages 14 and older), these courses cover the fundamentals of being a successful coach—on and off the field.