A statement of teaching principles
Data and Privacy Principles
Coaches are trusted with information about the athletes in their care. These are the principles we teach about protecting it, in plain language.
1. Never paste identifiable athlete information into public AI tools
Public AI tools may store what you type, and you usually cannot control where it goes after that. We teach coaches not to enter anything that could identify an athlete, including:
- names, nicknames, jersey numbers paired with a team, photos, or video of identifiable athletes;
- contact details, addresses, or social media accounts;
- injury, health, or medical information;
- academic records, eligibility status, or disciplinary matters;
- recruiting evaluations or notes tied to a specific person.
This matters most for minors. High school athletes, and some college athletes, are under 18. Information about minors deserves the greatest care, and we teach coaches to keep it out of public AI tools entirely.
2. Check your school or organization's policies first
Schools, districts, athletic departments, and conferences may have their own rules about which tools staff can use and what information can be shared with them. Some provide approved tools with their own protections. We teach coaches to find and follow those policies before using any AI tool for program work, and to ask when the policy is unclear.
3. Learn with sample or anonymized data
Exercises in the curriculum use sample data or data you have anonymized yourself. Anonymizing means removing names and anything else that could point back to a person, such as numbers, dates of birth, hometowns, or unusual details. When in doubt, use made-up data. The skills transfer just the same.
4. Review everything before you use it
AI tools can be confidently wrong. We teach coaches to treat AI output as a draft: check facts and numbers, read every message before it is sent, and keep the final decision with the coach.