Sports coaching histories and biographies: a raison D’être

Abstract

ABSTRACT Contemporary research into sports coaching practice and coach behaviour stimulates discussion about the fundamental precepts of effective coaching, although these debates invariably lack references to historical patterns of coaching practice or consideration of the cultural environments within which coaching has evolved. The last decade has seen a significant increase in studies outlining the biographies and working lives of nineteenth and twentieth-century coaches and these have highlighted the ongoing importance of tacit craft knowledge, community, experience, and intuition, to coaching effectiveness. This introduction to a special issue of Sports Coaching Review exploring some coaching histories argues that researchers should reflect on how these histories illustrate key elements of what coaches value and how they operate. Taken collectively, these biographies illuminate how sports coaching practice has been traditionally transmitted and sustained in different sports and cultural environments and they provide an essential backdrop to discussions about the nature of modern-day coaching.