Here's a number that should keep program directors up at night: fewer than one-third of the roughly six million youth sport coaches in the United States have ever received training in evidence-based youth development practices.
Not training in tactics. Not training in drills. Training in how to actually work with young people in ways that help them grow, stay safe, and want to come back next season.
Most coaches enter the role with sport knowledge they picked up somewhere: as players, as fans, from YouTube, from their own parents coaching them decades ago. That knowledge is valuable. But it's not the same as knowing how to create a positive environment, communicate effectively with kids, include players who aren't naturals, or recognize when a young athlete is struggling emotionally.
The gap isn't "bad coaches." The gap is untrained coaches doing their best without the tools to do better.
And that gap shows up everywhere. In athlete experience. In parent satisfaction. In safety incidents. In retention rates. In the coaches themselves burning out because they're winging it and it's exhausting.
Coach training is one of the few levers you can pull that reliably improves outcomes across the board. The challenge is that most programs either don't prioritize it, don't do it well, or do it once and never follow up.
What "Untrained" Actually Means
When we say coaches are untrained, we don't mean they've never watched a game or can't explain the rules. We mean they've never been taught the skills that make the biggest difference in a kid's experience.
Creating a positive motivational climate. Do your coaches build environments where effort matters more than outcomes? Where mistakes are learning opportunities rather than reasons for shame? Most coaches default to whatever they experienced as players, which wasn't always healthy.
Communication and behavior management. How do your coaches give feedback? How do they handle a kid who's acting out, or a kid who's shutting down? Can they correct without crushing? These skills don't come naturally to most people.
Inclusion and belonging. Every team has the kid who isn't as athletic, the kid who's neurodivergent, the kid who's new and doesn't know anyone. Untrained coaches often don't know how to include these players meaningfully. They default to giving attention to the naturals and hoping everyone else figures it out.
Mental wellness basics. Coaches spend more time with kids than almost any adult outside their family. They're often the first to notice when something's wrong. But only 18% of coaches report feeling confident addressing mental health concerns. Most don't know when to ask questions, when to listen, or when to refer to someone else.
Safety literacy. Injury prevention, heat protocols, concussion recognition, appropriate training loads. Even safety training isn't staying current: one survey found that coaches trained in safety and injury prevention dropped from 34% in 2019 to 26% in 2024.
The coaches who are great at all of this? They either sought it out themselves or got lucky with a mentor. That's not a system. That's chance.
Why the Training Gap Persists
Program directors know training matters. So why does the gap persist?
Volunteer time is limited. Most youth coaches are parents fitting this into already full lives. A mandatory eight-hour certification feels impossible. So programs either skip training or make it so minimal it doesn't change behavior.
Available training often misses the point. A lot of coach education is designed to help teams win games, not to help kids develop. Tactics and drills are easier to teach than interpersonal skills. So that's what most programs offer.
One-and-done doesn't stick. Even when coaches do get trained, there's rarely follow-up. No reinforcement, no refreshers, no observation. Behaviors revert. By mid-season, the training is forgotten.
No measurement means no accountability. If you don't track whether coaches are completing training or applying what they learned, quality varies wildly by team. Some families get a great coach. Others don't. It's luck of the draw.
Cost is a real barrier. High-quality training programs exist, but they often cost more than volunteer-run programs can afford. So training becomes another thing that well-funded programs do and everyone else skips.
What the Evidence Actually Shows
Here's why investing in coach training is worth the effort.
Training improves athlete experience. A systematic review of coach development programs found statistically significant effects on youth outcomes including enjoyment and reduced anxiety. Coach interpersonal skills are trainable, and when they improve, kids have better experiences.
Trained coaches report higher impact. The National Coach Survey found that coaches who had received training in areas like life skill development and social-emotional learning reported higher perceived impact across multiple athlete outcomes compared to untrained peers. Some of this may be self-selection, motivated coaches seeking training, but it still supports training as a high-value investment.
Large-scale programs are showing results. The Million Coaches Challenge, launched in 2021 to address the training gap, reports that 93% of coaches trained by their partners felt more confident supporting youth. Athletes reported more joy, stronger relationships with coaches, and higher likelihood to continue playing.
This isn't soft stuff. It's the infrastructure that determines whether kids want to keep playing sports.
What High-Quality Training Actually Looks Like
High-quality doesn't mean long or expensive. It means effective.
Evidence-based content. Youth development principles, not just tactics. How to create a mastery climate. How to communicate with different types of kids. Safety essentials including injury prevention, heat protocols, and concussion basics.
Behavioral specificity. "Do these three things at practice" is more useful than theory lectures. Coaches need concrete actions they can implement immediately.
Short, stackable modules. Volunteers can finish a 20-minute module. They can't finish a day-long seminar. Break training into pieces that fit real schedules.
Reinforcement over time. Pre-season training isn't enough. Mid-season boosters, observation, mentoring, and end-of-season reflection help behaviors stick.
Accountability. Completion tracking, clear standards, and some mechanism for quality control. Training that's optional and unmeasured won't change anything.
Equity and inclusion baked in. Not as an add-on module. As a thread running through everything. How to include kids with different abilities, different backgrounds, different needs.
Building a Minimum Viable Training Stack
You don't need to overhaul everything at once. Start with a non-negotiable baseline that every coach must complete before working with kids.
Youth development basics. Relationships matter. Autonomy support matters. Mastery climate over fear-of-mistakes. These concepts take 30 minutes to introduce and change how coaches approach every interaction.
Safety essentials. Injury prevention, heat and hydration, concussion recognition, emergency action plan. Every coach should know what to do when something goes wrong.
Boundaries and safe interaction expectations. What's appropriate contact, communication, and behavior. Where the lines are. This protects kids and protects coaches.
That's your baseline. It gets you from "random" to "minimally competent." It's not everything, but it's the floor.
Designing Training That Fits Volunteer Reality
The biggest reason training fails is that it's designed for people with unlimited time. Your coaches don't have unlimited time.
Pre-season foundation. 60 to 90 minutes of online learning with a short quiz. Covers the non-negotiables. Completed before the first practice.
Mid-season boosters. Two 20-minute modules during the season. Topics that matter most when coaches are actually in the role: communication under pressure, managing parent conflict, adjusting for struggling players.
End-of-season reflection. A short self-assessment tied to your standards. What went well, what to work on, what support would help next time.
This pattern respects volunteer time while building skills throughout the season when they're most relevant.
Pairing Training With Tools That Reduce Friction
Training sticks when it changes what coaches do tomorrow. Give them tools that make the right behaviors easy.
Practice plan templates. A library of age-appropriate practice structures so coaches aren't starting from scratch every week.
Parent communication scripts. "How to handle the post-game complaint." "What to say when a kid isn't getting playing time." Ready-made language for the hardest conversations.
Philosophy one-pagers. A clear, simple document that states your program's expectations around playing time, sideline behavior, and coach-parent communication. Something coaches can hand to parents and point to.
These tools translate training into action. Without them, coaches hear good ideas and then go back to whatever they were doing before.
Adding Lightweight Quality Control
Training without measurement is a hope, not a system. You need at least one mechanism to know whether it's working.
Practice observation. One visit per season using a simple rubric. Not punitive. Developmental. What did the coach do well? What could improve? This creates accountability and gives coaches feedback they rarely get.
Athlete and parent pulse surveys. Five questions at mid-season or end-of-season. Did your child feel supported? Did communication meet your needs? Quick, anonymous, actionable.
Coach self-assessment. Aligned to your standards. Coaches reflect on their own performance against clear criteria. Low effort, high awareness.
Pick one. Just one. Having any quality control mechanism is infinitely better than having none.
Incentivizing Completion
Volunteers aren't paid, so you can't require training the way you would with employees. But you can make completion feel worthwhile.
Priority scheduling. Coaches who complete training get first pick of practice slots.
Registration discounts. A discount on next season's registration for their child.
Recognition. Acknowledge trained coaches publicly. Certificates, mentions in newsletters, thank-you events. Small gestures signal that training matters.
Career pathways. For coaches who want to grow, create levels of certification that unlock additional responsibilities or advanced training opportunities.
The goal is making training feel like an investment that benefits the coach, not just another obligation.
The Payoff Is Everywhere
When your coaches are trained, everything downstream improves.
Kids have better experiences because the environment is designed for development, not just competition. Parents are more satisfied because coaches communicate clearly and handle conflict well. Safety incidents decrease because coaches know what to look for and how to respond. Retention improves because families want to come back to programs where their kids feel seen and supported. And coaches themselves are less likely to burn out because they have the tools to succeed instead of winging it alone.
You're not going to fix the national training gap from your desk. But you can fix it in your program. A minimum viable training stack, reinforced over time, paired with tools and lightweight accountability.
That's the lever worth pulling. The question is whether you'll pull it.
Ian Goldberg is the CEO of Signature Media and the Editor of the largest and fastest growing sports parenting newsletter. He’s been recognized as an industry expert by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, the US Olympic Committee’s Truesport, and the Aspen Institute's Project Play. Ian is also a suburban NJ sports dad of two teenage daughters and has over 2,000 hours of volunteer time coaching them (which he calls the most fun form of R&D for his newsletter content). Ian and his team provide players, coaches, parents and program directors with the articles and content they need to have a great sports season. Ian has spent most of his career in digital product development and marketing and got his start at the White House where he worked for the economic advisors to two US Presidents.
