The ACF coach certification program managed and executed by the well-respected Jatin Patel, a multi-sport coach, Cricket Hall of Famer, and recipient of that organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award, celebrates its 10th anniversary this week.
ACF launched the Cricket Coach Education Program in May 2014. This unique cricket coach certification program is designed from an American coach’s perspective on how educators at schools and colleges understand and teach the game to scholars. Following such guidelines to educate Americans about the sport of cricket is expected to make coaching American boys and girls and certifying coaches based on coaching techniques employed by American sports coaches much easier.
ACF launched the Level 2 coaching certification program in 2015 before the 2019 Coronavirus pandemic. ACF also collaborated with Omtex Sports in India to launch T20-based virtual global coaching programs. ACF is also actively involved in statewide Scholastic education programs in the USA.
To date, ACF has conducted 86 weekend coaching clinics, some of them with Cricket Legends, to train coaches in most states. These include many school teachers, educators, and future PE teachers trained at nine universities in the last ten years and many PE teachers at the elementary school level. The Level 1 academic program consists of coaching the basics and introducing cricket as a part of the Physical Education (PE) curriculum in schools.
ACF Level 2 certified coaches are trained to offer training to Level 1 coaches, and there is an ample number of instructors available to do so year-round on a demand basis. As of May 2024, there are more than 500 ACF Level 2 certified coaches in the USA, which does not include out-of-country coaches or school and college educators.
In just ten 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.
The ACF coaching program leads education projects or programs in the USA; 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.
The ACF – “for the coaches, and by the coaches” will continue to develop initiatives and programs that simplify coaching cricket to an American audience and youth still skeptical about the sport.
