I have coached distance events for many years. This year I am Head Coach and don't have much experience with sprinters. Would like to know of websites that I can send kids/coaches/parents to for information on sprint workouts. Any ideas?
Can I just say that in my opinion sending parents or athletes to get their own sprint workouts is a perfect recipe for either over-training or injuries. Unfortunately, as the head coach, you will then be held responsible if any of those previously nice and friendly parents decide to sue you for negligence.
As a distance runner, who's been Head Coach for 8 years now and thus been forced to coach throwers, hurders, high jumpers, long jumpers and pretty much every other track event, I recommend getting your kids some basic track workouts a couple times a week, and spending the majority of your time focusing on core work and other types of training. You did say that this was primarily for middle school, right? They don't necessarily need to be on a track doing 150's or other sprint workouts more than once or twice a week.
This season, due to forces beyond my control, I've been forced to train my entire team on a grass football field and only use a track once or twice a week. This includes everyone from Seniors all the way down to the 3rd graders on my Elementary team. Our sprinters have been doing bleacher workouts at least once a week and in the last 3 weeks of practice, I think I can count on 1 hand the number of days we've actually even used the local public school's track for anything, including HJ, LJ & TJ.
The other, even more important recommendation I can make is that you attend a USATF Level 1 Coach's Certification course, ASAP. You probably won't be able to find one until this summer, as most of them are held between Oct. & Feb., each winter, but I can't emphasize enough how a 3 day weekend course will give you a lot of information and set you on the path to being as highly educated a coach as possible. Level 1 of course is just the beginning, but it will make you so much more confident in your ability to coach other areas and will provide you with contacts that you otherwise wouldn't ever come across.
AND, after you get the USATF Level 1 training, move on to Level 2. In Level 2, you learn even more specifics about sports sciences and then you can focus in on the Sprints/Hurdles/Relays training. I am a distance coach, but I've taken Level 2 training in Sprints/Hurdles/Relays, Jumps, and (of course) Endurance. The training is not a clinic that gives you a "how I coached Miss Super Athlete" info. Instead, it is an actual education in the how & why we do what we do when we train. For me, it took the guess work out of coaching and made it scientific. Now when the kids ask me why we are doing a certain workout, I can tell them something better than, "Because that's what my old coach in college had us do."
Click on the link in Andy's note above to learn more.