The final webinar of the 2023 Coach Webinar Series, presented by Gallagher, was all about Coaching Adult Athletes. This webinar focused on strategies to apply to coaching adult athletes and adapting sport to their specific needs.
This webinar was hosted by Special Olympics Washington Athlete Leader and football official, Garrett Utz. Garrett is a sport fanatic and still participates to this day. In the off-season, he officiates games at multiple levels in the state of Washington. Garrett has officiated at a USA Games, 2 Unified Cups and 2 World Games. Garrett also holds multiple leadership positions and is also an Athlete Advisor for the Sport and Competition team in Special Olympics International.
We had the pleasure of being joined by Scott Gregory from Gallagher. Gallagher is the official sponsor of Special Olympics Sport and Coaching Programming, and helped to make the Coach Webinar Series happen. Scott discussed the value that Special Olympics has brought to him, as a current Special Olympics coach and a board member of Special Olympics Southern California. Thank you again to Scott and Gallagher for all that they do for Special Olympics globally.
The next person we heard from was Thomas Graham from the Newcastle United Foundation. Thomas gave an insightful overview of the walking football programme in Newcastle United Foundation and the holistic approach they take to sport. Thomas gave background to how the programme was introduced and developed and how they plan to continue to grow it going forward. This was an amazing opportunity for coaches to see how sport can be adapted to their athletes.
Following Thomas, we had Ken Black. Ken has worked as a practitioner in the area of inclusive physical activity and disability sport for almost 45 years. Ken presented on the STEP Model he assisted with developing.
STEP stands for:
- Space
- Task
- Equipment
- People
Ken showed how STEP can be applied to coaching environments to really get the most out of your athletes. Ken’s take home messages were about adaptability as a coach. The STEP adaptation tool can be applied to all contexts and athletes to ensure they enjoy a valuable challenging sporting environment.
To close out the webinar, we had a very passionate and inspiring message from Special Olympics supporter, former U.S. Men’s National Team player and current Vice President of Sporting for U.S. Soccer, Oguchi Onyewu. Oguchi thanked all of the coaches for attending the webinars in this year’s Coach Webinar Series and praised them for continually looking to improve their coaching and to provide good coaching environments for their athletes.
Listen to this webinar in: Arabic • Chinese • French • Italian • Portuguese • Russian • Spanish
