UK Sport’s female coaches leadership programme is now past its halfway stage as 28 coaches from 16 sports come together as part of a plan to more than double representation in the Olympic and Paralympic high-performance community by Paris 2024.
In March, as part of marking International Women’s Day, UK Sport Chair Dame Katherine Grainger hosted a Q&A with five coaches to get insight into the programme and how they are benefitting from it as well as providing the opportunity to share experiences from their careers.
Karen Brown, Claire Morrison, Monica Greenwood, Sarah Kelleher and Coral Nourrice all joined as part of the conversation with Grainger. Brown acts as a mentor to all 20 participant coaches on the programme, which includes Greenwood, Kelleher and Nourrice, while Morrison is one of seven coach leaders.
All 20 participating coaches are being offered key support and development opportunities, as part of the programme, including theory-based sessions, opportunities to meet and sense make areas of interest, and times to observe their assigned coachleader in their environment.
For Nourrice, who is the Paralympic Talent Development Coordinator at UK Athletics and alongside Greenwood and Kelleher, is part of Mel Marshall’s coaching group, she very quickly put the learnings of the early sessions of the programme into action.
She said: “When I got asked to do it, it was something I would have normally said ‘no way’ to. But the fact that I said yes straight away is a big step for me and shows that I am going out of my comfort zone. I network as part of my job and I like that element of the programme. We can all help each other and call on each other if we need to.
“This programme has given me the confidence to network within my own organisation. Talking to others – my mentor, my coach leader – has helped. If I need to get somewhere, I can’t just sit here and wait for it to come to me I need to step up, step out of my comfort zone and reach out for help.”
Meanwhile Brown, who spent over 15 years as a coach for Great Britain Hockey and England Hockey, explained her role as mentor in further detail. She said: “It is to help them have courageous conversations with each other around what they have learnt in the theory – what is resonating for them, what it means for them in their world and what are they going to do next. I hold the mirror up to them quite a lot.
“The interesting space is how curious people are and how willing to learn they are from each other. The other really important bit is how open and willing they are to share what they have done so others can learn from within. I am hoping that it leaves them in a much better place than where they were when they started this programme.”
Key to the conversation hosted by Grainger was the sharing of experiences and Greenwood, the Women’s Endurance Podium Coach for the Great Britain Cycling Team, believes the programme can highlight how female coaches can be successful.
She said: “The challenges are the little things. If we go away on a trip, people come up and chat to you because you are in kit but they always presume that I’m in a more traditional female role. It gets a bit frustrating after a while.
“I have a picture from a race a few years ago where of all of the people around the race, I am the only woman. There is that feeling that you are constantly in the minority and you forget about it. I really believe as women that we have the skillset to be really good coaches. We are good listeners; we are compassionate but we are equally able to be firm and performance minded.”
The 20 participant coaches have all been identified as having the potential to coach at the summer and winter Olympic and Paralympic Games from Paris 2024 and beyond. And Kelleher added: “When people think about coaching they have this stereotypical view of what a coach is.
“We have to really challenge what those stereotypes are and we need to start defining what good coaching is and recognising that there is diversity of coaching. There is definitely a shift happening in that slowly and I think we can do more to understand that and see the role of more women in coaching and more ethnic diversity in coaching that moves away from that male default.”
While highlighted as one of the seven coach leaders, Morrison, Performance Coach at Boccia UK, believes she is also set to improve as a coach as a result of being on the programme and praises the target being set.
She said: “I am learning as much from them as they are from me and I think that is the joy of this programme, it is about that learning environment that has been set up. I love the fact that it is a really challenging target for the programme.
“By setting out a really tough challenge, that makes it much more significant. The standard of coaches we have got on this programme is phenomenal and really exciting to see. It has been more than what I was expecting. As soon as you meet people you get that opportunity to grow and connect the programme in the way that works for them.”
UK Sport’s female coaches leadership programme will run until June. For more information about the programme click here.