Sports coaching and virtue ethics

Our opening claim is that sport provides coaches the opportunity to realize a range of technical, physical and moral excellences. In order for coaches to do so, it is necessary for them to pay equal attention to both the inherent morality of sports structures and their own moral agency. It means that the coach, as a central cog in the sports environment, has moral responsibilities reaching far beyond the purely technical and tactical ( Jones et al. 2004; Jones 2007). In fact, the coach is crucially involved in facilitating the good sporting contest because they are responsible for establishing and controlling apposite conduct. The coach’s moral responsibilities are to be understood as not merely the immediate or long-term policing of foul play to ensure compliance with sporting etiquette, or the infusion of respect for ‘fair-play conventions’. Rather, their role extends to the nurturing and promotion of specific virtues that directly concern the attainment of the values of sport.