NWCA Scholastic CEO Leadership Academy Coming to Bismarck June 25 |

National Wrestling Coaches Association Scholastic CEO Leadership Academy is coming to Bismarck, North Dakota June 25. The SLA is free to all coaches who register for the NHSACA Conference in Bismarck. This is an excellent way for coaches to add to their education in coaching. The NWCA has had 27 free SLA’s in 25 different states over the past year and a half with a mission of creating transformational coaches in the sport of wrestling. To accomplish this, goal is to put one seasoned/veteran coach together with 4-5 aspiring young coaches.

This program is uniquely designed to substantially improve the recruitment and retention of wrestlers at all levels (primarily in the educational environment).  It will also help coaches provide the ultimate educationally based wrestling experience for each student on their team.  The need for this training has never been greater when you consider the following national vital signs for scholastic wrestling:

Currently, 29% of high school dual meet matches are forfeits.

The average roster size of a high school team has shrunk from 37 in 1975 to 22 in 2018.

High school participation has fallen by over 30,000 for 7 straight years (272,000 to 244,000).  Five of the top seven high school boys’ sports have grown in participation during this time.

The average tenure of a high school coach is only 3-5 years.

While overcoming a 30,000-participant drop may seem like a daunting challenge, we could completely reverse the trend if each of our 10,000 head high school wrestling coaches across the nation simply recruited/retained 3 additional wrestlers to their team next year.  We believe that nobody plays a more important role in reversing our participation trend than the head coach at every level.  With this in mind, our CEO Leadership Academy is the perfect first step!

The Academy consists of 13 short online modules that address the most critical areas of coaching such as recruitment/retention of wrestlers, working with parents, program building, branding, and much more.  Participating coaches will have access to approximately 7 engaging hours of content (video interviews, power points, etc.) provided by many of our best coaches and content experts across the nation (you can start/stop the modules whenever you like).  The modules contain short assignments and as the coach completes them, a workbook is developed (which can be printed out).  The curriculum was developed by internationally renowned coaching development expert, Dr. Dan Gould at Michigan State University in collaboration with many of our top wrestling coaches and administrators. 

Upon completion of the online modules, coaches are invited to attend a 4 hour “in person” Academy workshop. This workshop agenda includes panel discussions, small group discussion, and large group discussion.  It is important that both seasoned veteran coaches and young aspiring coaches participate in the Academy.  We typically place one seasoned veteran coach at a table with 4-5 aspiring coaches.  We need seasoned veteran coaches to serve in facilitator/mentoring capacities so that we can create a terrific experience for the young aspiring young coaches.  The NWCA will provide a professionally trained facilitator and a keynote speaker for the workshop.

We always have a keynote speaker at each workshop who is a high-ranking Marine.  They discuss how the Marine recruiters use their “Benefit Tags” to illustrate how the Marine Corps can help young men and women accomplish their personal and professional goals in life.  The Marines have helped us develop something similar that we call Championship Building Blocks. The Marine Recruiters help our coaches understand how to leverage these Championship Building Blocks to recruit the next great generation of wrestlers into our sport.    

Ideally, we like to have a minimum of 50 coaches participate in a workshop (we’d love to have 200 attend). We also understand some states do not have the large number of teams as others.  We encourage head high school coaches to bring their entire high school and middle school coaching staffs. Since fall 2017, we have conducted 27 CEO Leadership Academies across the nation with terrific success.  I am happy to provide references in each state if your coaches would like some independent assessments of the experience. 

Please call my cell (Bud Hennebaul) anytime if you have questions (678-794-5756). 

Subjects covered at the SLA: