The American Cricket Federation (ACF) cricket coach certification program managed and executed by the well-respected Jatin Patel celebrates its 6th anniversary this week.
The Cricket Coach Education program launched in May 2014, is a unique cricket coach certification program designed from an American sports coach’s perspective on how educators understand the game and teach it to scholars. Following such guidelines, coaching cricket to American boys and girls would be much easier, as well as certifying the coaches, based on coaching techniques employed by American sports coaches.
The Level 1 program launched in May 2014, with the Level 2 certification, was launched one year later in 2015. To-date, ACF has trained coaches in 28 states and conducted 22 Level 2 coaching clinics where those coaches were certified to offer training to Level 1 coaches. There is now an ample number of instructors available to run Level 1 certification programs year-round, and on-demand. As of May 2020, there are 248 Level 2 ACF certified coaches in the USA, and that does not include County coaches, school, and college educators.
The Level 1 scholastic program includes coaching the basics and introducing cricket as part of the Physical Education (PE) curriculum in schools. The 473 ACF certified coaches have many school teachers, educators, and future PE teachers trained at eight universities in the last six years, and many PE teachers at the elementary school level.
In just six years, the ACF cricket-coaching program has established itself as the USA’s only cricket coaching program based on how educators in the USA best understand the game of cricket and how they prefer to teach their youth scholars in schools and colleges.
ACF has trained more Level 1 and Level 2 coaches than all other past projects and initiatives by cricket boards and education programs in the USA’s cricket history. ACF continues to expand its coach’s network in the USA, while helping leagues and club communities develop youth cricket programs, by sponsoring coaching camps at no cost to those hosting the training clinics.
ACF will continue to develop initiatives and programs that simplify the basics of coaching cricket to an American audience and youths still skeptical about the sport.