December 10, 1996
(Tourism, Culture and Recreation)
The National Coaching Certification Council has accepted the nomination of Mike Luke as the chair for a two-year term. This will have a great impact on the sports scene in our province as it creates a direct link between our province and the governing body of coaching development in Canada. As a former national rugby coach, Mike Luke has an extensive background in coaching and has been directly involved with the creation and implementation of coach education programs in Canada for the last 15 years.
"Two years ago, the National Coaching Certification Council took on the challenging task of reevaluating the National Coaching Certification Program (NCCP). Although the present program is highly respected in the coaching world, we believed that the time has come to review and rethink the program with a much greater focus on meeting the needs of practising coaches," says Luke. "The evaluation has already provided important indicators of what we need to do better, but also how good much of the present program really is. I believe the process will result in significant changes to both the content and delivery of coach education programs in this country."
Mike Luke's present involvement in the NCCP is as a master course conductor in the Theory Program, and a course conductor for the high performance leadership skills component in the Level 4/5 program. For three years he was the technical editor of SPORTS, the sports science journal published by the Coaching Association of Canada, and was a member and former chairperson of the Comite de Theorie Francophone. He is currently a member of the planning and evaluation committee of the National Coaching Certification Council.
Mike was first appointed a national rugby coach in 1986 and has coached Canadian representative teams in New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Hong Kong, England, France and the United States, as well as Canada. He was the manager and assistance coach of the very successful Canadian team in the 1991 World Cup of Rugby on Europe. Prior to that, he had been a member and captain of the Canadian rugby team from 1973 until 1982.
He has served as a board member of Rugby Canada and National Team Selector. He has been a member of the National Coaching Committee of Rugby Canada since 1976 and serves as a mentor coach and master course conductor. He co-authored the Level 1-3 coaching certification manuals, as well as the Levels 4/5 coaching tasks in rugby football. He is a staff coach and member of the management committee of Rugby Canada's Elite Player Development Program, which currently includes three Newfoundland players, Sebastian Higgins, Ken Goodland and Peter Densmore. Along with the current national coach Pat Parfrey, Mike is the co-coach of Newfoundland's rugby squad for the 1997 Canada Summer Games in Brandon, Manitoba.
On top of this Mike is also active as one of the founding members of the Coaching Council of Newfoundland and Labrador, which is a non- profit organization with the purpose of developing coaching in our province.
Mike is currently a professor of French at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Contact: Tom Godden, (709) 729-6090, or fax (709) 729-5293; or e-mail: tgodden@tourism.gov.nf.ca.
| 1996 12 10 | 4:30 p.m. |
