By Yarone Arbel

Behind the scenes of the Omnitel U16 European Championship Men there are a few dozen of coaches from all over Europe start their climb to the top.

60 coaches from 37 FIBA Europe federations gathered in Kaunas, Lithuania to kick off the second FIBA Europe Coaches Certificate - a three year program that takes places every summer.

The first part of the clinic takes place in the U16 Championship, the following year the group attend the U18 championship and the third year will take them to a U20 event.

The first class graduated earlier this summer in the U20 European Championship Men in Rhodes, Greece, and less than a month after the FECC takes off again.

Michael Schwarz, FIBA-Europe's Coaching Co-ordinator, called in the legendary Serbian coach Svetislav Pesic to be the mentor of the program and follow the students every summer in their studies.

"I believe this is a great opportunity for a lot of coaches to learn new things and explore themselves to new materials," he says in an interview with fibaeurope.com.

"They take lessons not only about on court material but also off court as marketing, psychological and educational aspects, doping control and more to give them a full view on the totality of what coaches need to know."

The FECC is certainly not the only clinic for coaches out there, but Pesic finds one big element that distinguish it from the others out there.

"The coaches get to follow the youth championships year to year and this way they follow the development of youth prospects.

"Then we discuss it in class and they need to present what these players can and still cannot do, so they also learn how to scout players and what things to look for.

"That way the coaches also learn how to speak in a group with confidence, which is a very important thing for any coach."

Pesic isn't the only key basketball personality to show the young coaches new horizons.

The wish to improve more and more is a key element for every coach, and the FECC isn't any different.

This year two basketball veterans were called to join the crew.

Nihat Izic - Turkey's U16 coach and Tofas Bursa's head coach alongside Janez Drvaric, one of the great teachers in basketball and developer of Slovenian basketball players and Rob Meurs - probably the most experienced and veteran scout around, share their knowledge with the young coaches.

"We keep adding materials to make it a richer experience, and one thing we did try to change from the first generation, is to have more practical work on the floor," adds Pesic.

"The coaches themselves, some of them former players, show their colleagues the things we teach and practice, and it's a very good way to learn new things this way."

Coming here is far from being a vacation and just watching youth basketball.

The students need to run several workshops, present them in class, do homework, several off and on-court exams and in the months following the clinic write a 25 pages paper.

For each task they get graded, and some of the first generation students failed, and didn't get the FECC diploma.

One of the participating coaches in the second generation of the FECC is Chris Hallam of England.

After several days into the clinic he sounds tired but pleased.

"It's non-stop work, but that's a good thing, because I came here to study, work hard and learn new things," he says to fibaeurope.com.

Back home he's coaching a senior team in his town Derby in addition to two youth teams - one boys and another girls.

"To watch youth games in such high level as we do here together with all the material we absorb in the clinic is a great experience for me and I'm sure it will help me a lot when I go back home to coach.

"We sit and watch the games in the arena, eat very late at night after the games finish and see a lot of youth basketball, and this is how we feel what it's like to actually be part of such event," he shares.

"Two other great things here is the mass and quality of material we learn every day, and also meeting high profile basketball people as Pesic, Izic and Meurs.

"Most coaches don't get the chance to be exposed to such people and such material, so I try to make the most of that while I'm here."

For coach Hallam and the other 59 participants in the second class of the program, the FECC begins this year, and will finish in two years from now in the 2011 U20 European Championship, but the real challenge will be to use the knowledge they pick up here and take it back home, to educate better basketball players for the future of European basketball.