Other than one 'insider' view, neither the discussion nor the referenced blog have given any specifics about what the politics is that caused the resignations from the USATF Coaches Education (CE) committee.
People have resigned from the administrative committee; nowhere does it say (yet, anyway) that these individuals have said they'll no longer be doing teaching.
From what I've seen, the Coaching Education committee (CE) has had a somewhat non-continuous history at the top level in the past decade. There have been a number of committee chairs and people involved who have come and gone for any number of reasons, and development/advancement of coaches education as a whole does not seem to have changed much.
The nation-wide program that's supposed to cover all levels of the sport still has not in practice matched the planned 3 levels of certification after 20 years of existence.
Maybe the current group that resigned - Boo only being the chair for a relatively short period - is unfortunately meeting the need for a clear working plan or some other overall accountability by a similarly new coaching coordination division in the national office.
From my local experience, I can state that
- I've not been able to obtain a current list of approved Level I instructors from anyone (the source is supposed to be "the committee") for the past four years
- CE was asked/charged with creating an on-line version of the Level I course; no progress was made.
- At least two individuals (not among the names in any of these discussions) have tried to come in and put on schools without notifying local associations of their plans or asking if we're planning on running our own, and without getting the association involved. Seemed like a profiteering scheme.
Three levels seem to cover all the constituencies of USATF, but the conflict appears to again be about who gets the priorities in a program that needs to be all things to all groups.
What is/was the CE committee plan to move along all three levels? What is the national office requests/plans?
And how are all of these in conflict with an athlete centered coaching education program (the latter phrase being emphasized in the opening 15 minuts of the Level I I oversaw this past summer).
Steve Vaitones