Tom Izzo has it. Ron Mason had it. Bobby Williams is developing it.

It, is something coaches call the ability to positively affect the learning ability and performance of their athletes.

Deb Feltz, director of MSU’ Department of Kinesiology, has been examining this philosophy not only on the athletic field, but also in the classroom.

However, the idea of coaching efficacy, or coaching competence, was not the first thing that got her interested in this field of research.

“My intents started with nonathletes attempting physical activities for the first time,” Feltz said.

“I was interested in fear-invoking activities - like diving.”

Feltz decided to take the role of confidence in a different direction.

She looked at how teachers used their efficacy to motivate their students. After that, with the help of three graduate assistants, she turned to another form of teaching - coaching.

Feltz had some previous experience with coaching, and it seemed like the next step for her research.

“Coaches pick athletes, teachers can’t,” she said. “And coaches are easily seen.”

Before continuing with this research, Feltz and company developed a scale to measure coaching confidence, called the coaching efficacy scale.

In 1992, former MSU kinesiology Professor Jeong-Keun Park developed a scale that examined three factors - technique confidence, interpersonal confidence and competition confidence.

For a 1999 study, Feltz and her graduate assistants developed a similar scale, but broke it down to look at game strategy, motivation, technique and character.

Four hundred random high-school coaches from all sports categories - individual, dual and team sports - were given a demographic questionnaire, which included the coach’s personal data, a team ability perception question and a perceived social support questionnaire.

The purpose of the study was to develop a way to measure coaching efficacy in high-school sports and examine them against a set of hypotheses.

Some of the hypotheses were that the greater a coach’s winning percentage, the more years of experience and the higher a coach’s perceived ability of his athletes, the greater the social support.

The questionnaires were the first phase of the study and the second phase was to find a source to compare the hypotheses against.

Boys’ basketball coaches were picked to take part in the process. One hundred and twenty-five coaches, with at least one year of experience, were randomly selected. Sixty-nine coaches returned the survey.

Using the questionnaires and the Coaching Efficacy Scale of the coaches, the research team ranked the 15 highest CES scores and the 15 lowest CES scores to further examine.

Those coaches were asked if they could be observed for two practices so researchers could gather further data.

What they found is coaches with higher winning percentages had higher coaching confidence than those with lower efficacy, and more importantly, the athletes were more satisfied with the confident coaches.

These results matched the hypotheses closely. But there still were several other factors, like community support and perceived ability, that also played a role.

Overall, the study found that coaches who praise and encourage their teams and provide more instructional support tend to have a higher coaching efficacy.

Currently the kinesiology department is turning their attention to the college ranks and looking at the similarities or differences between the findings of high-school coaches.

Second-year kinesiology doctoral students Nick Myers and Tiffanye Tonsing are examining Division III athletes and coaches in basketball, soccer, softball and baseball.

Myers is examining college female athletes and comparing the results with their male-counterparts.

“Female teams haven’t been studied before,” Myers said.

Myers said the data collecting has been difficult because no real research on coaching education has been done at the Division III level and there are financial setbacks, too.

Myers, who has been working on this study for more than a year, has received preliminary data from 80 teams representing basketball, soccer and softball. He said the process has not been easy.

“We want to get different types of surveys,” Myers said. “Getting surveys from coaches with high confidence levels, isn’t good enough.

“There are coaches that think it’s not that important, but we need to represent them too.”

Myers said he is currently receiving data from a mid-March survey before the seasons started and is getting ready for a midseason survey in April. He said after the data is collected he will examine everything and compare it with previous studies.

“If things aren’t working out, we have to dig and figure out why,” Myers said.

Tonsing is looking closely at how Division III athletes and coaches perceive what qualities are important in coaching.

The response from the surveyed athletes found coaches who encourage positive talk, act confident and have the ability to verbally persuade are more effective.

Coaches said instruction-drilling, modeling confidence of oneself and encouraging positive talk were the most effective.

Division III Calvin College baseball coach Jeff Pettinga said keeping his athletes motivated is one the biggest parts of his job.

“You want your kids to play well,” Pettinga said. “They know they’re going to be playing for two hours, you just have to keep them focused.”

Pettinga said he’s coached football before, but baseball has allowed him to develop confidence in his players by putting them into positions that they may not have experienced before.

“I try to put them in a position to better their game,” he said. “I’m looking forward to what they could bring next year as well.”

Pettinga, who has been coaching the Knights for 25 years, and is approaching 300 wins, said a lot has changed in the way coaches get their teams prepared and motivated to achieve.

“These kids are wanting to learn the game,” he said. “Instead of coming out at the beginning of March, they’re playing year-round.”