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Training Facilities
The facilities at the three sports colleges and in university sports
departments vary widely. At the National Taiwan College of Physical
Education 國立臺灣體育學院 and the Taipei Physical Education College 臺北市立體育學院,
much of the equipment is older. In contrast, the nine-year-old National
College of Physical Education and Sports is equipped with international-class
training facilities. Located on a 66-hectare site near the northern
town of Linkou, this school is considered Taiwan's best sports institution.
Students can earn undergraduate degrees in health, physical education,
or sports technique, and graduate degrees in physical education
or sports science. Entrance into the undergraduate health program
is by written examination, but applicants must also be top athletes
for admission to the physical education and sports science programs. |
One of the biggest obstacles facing local athletes is the lack of a comprehensive
professional coaching system. Coaching school athletes has only recently become
a full-time job and permanent career. In 1989, the MOE established a full-time
school-coach training system wherein recruits receive three months of training
before being assigned full-time coaching positions at a school, sports association,
or the Tsoying National Sports Training Center. Since coaches still receive
lower salaries and have less job security than teachers, most prefer teaching
positions instead. Consequently, most school teams are coached on a volunteer
basis by teachers who enjoy sports. Many national associations choose to hire
coaches on a part-time or contractual basis. These coaches hold short-term contracts
and go back to their positions as P.E. teachers or coaches of professional teams
after a particular event is over.
Most national associations and their athletes, however, cannot afford coaching.
Therefore, athletes must rely on coaches willing to volunteer their time. In
order to help alleviate the shortage of coaches, the ROC Sports Federation has
invited distinguished coaches and athletic trainers to Taiwan from Australia,
the Chinese mainland, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the Philippines,
and the United States to provide instruction in swimming, weightlifting, archery,
shooting, diving, judo, taekwondo, track and field, equestrian, golf, table
tennis, gymnastics, softball, boxing, baseball, badminton, kuoshu, fencing,
basketball, and soccer.
The National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports is actively studying the
implementation of a system for certifying and rewarding coaches. Besides revising
the "implementation guidelines on training and supervising full-time school
coaches," the NCPFS also issued the "reward and punishment standards for full-time
school coaches" in September 1999 and held related seminars for coaches. In addition,
the government held the 1999 Coach Training Seminar for International Games
to raise the standards of coaches working with sports basics, and 420 coaches
participated.
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