Nearly 100 coaches gathered at the MHSAA office on Saturday, Nov. 1, for more than six hours of learning in Level 1 of the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program. What occurred that day demonstrates the MHSAA’s commitment to a particular teaching and learning model we have chosen for its effectiveness, not its ease.

It would have been much simpler to put the 100 coaches in a single room and rotate three lecturers in front of them, and still simpler if everyone participated online in the isolation of their homes. But CAP is not delivered in either of those ways.

Rather, on Nov. 1, the nearly 100 coaches were placed in three separate rooms, so the presenters could see everyone’s eyes and read everyone’s faces and address everyone’s questions and concerns.

And, within those smaller rooms, the coaches sat in pods with four or five other coaches for more practical and often deeper discussion than the larger group setting allows.

Meanwhile, in an even more intimate fourth room, another 20 coaches completed the sixth and final level of the Coaches Advancement Program.

In an online world there is still a place for face-to-face teaching and learning. This is especially true in coaching where interpersonal relationships have more to do with determining success and failure than Xs and Os.