“We haven’t agreed on that, and you’ll never get people to agree on that.” Contestation within the Canadian sport coaching professional project

Drawing on the findings from a larger institutional ethnographic study exploring gender, work, and professionalization in sport coaching in the Canadian university sport system, this paper brings to light the contested nature of the sport coaching professional project in Canada. We specifically focus on the efforts of the Coaching Association of Canada to advance its Chartered Professional Coach designation as the preeminent coaching credential and mechanism by which to progress its vision of the sport coaching professional project. However, key findings demonstrate that the Coaching Association of Canada and Chartered Professional Coach are met by university sport practitioners with an ambivalence that complicates, if not works against, the Coaching Association of Canada's efforts to professionalize sport coaching. This paper concludes by focusing on how the intraprofessional tensions within the sport coaching professional project, specifically the ambivalence around the Chartered Professional Coach, add to the challenges faced by women sport coaches in Canadian university sport.