Athletic clubs are an important adjunct to middle- and high-school education that help to cultivate a sound mind and body and a sense of humanity in students through extracurricular sports activities, playing a vital role in nurturing students’ mental and physical growth.
　The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of coaches’ initiative in such athletic clubs. We examined how the policies adopted by these individuals affect the determination and training goals of the team, how goals are shared by a team, and who determines the team’s daily training method. We also clarified how students evaluate their coaches’ policies and administrative skills, as well as their practice and daily training routines. We applied the formative evaluation system of athletic clubs developed by Fukami and Okazawa (2018). A questionnaire consisting of 2 categories (“determining training goals and content” and “determining training methods”) to clearly assess the coaches’ initiative was administered to 493 coaches who ran athletic clubs. The subjects also included 4,083 middle-school students from 260 clubs and 3,879 high-school students from 233 clubs.
　The results revealed that regardless of sports category, the coaches of many athletic clubs talked with all of their students to determine the team’s goals and were highly appreciated by both middle- and high-school students. However, the coaches also showed initiative in developing their practice plans, the contents thereof, and considered how to implement them, and a majority of the students expressed their appreciation for such decisiveness and leadership.