The Women in High Performance Residency Experience programme has given Colleen more capacity to focus on women’s coaching in high performance, creating a ripple effect across the small and adaptable organisation. In just 18 months, they’ve introduced innovative approaches to coach development, significantly increased the number of women in coaching, adapted their recruitment strategies, and established a women’s working group who’ve become “the voice of change”.
Colleen Campbell often draws a parallel between teaching in early childhood settings and high performance environments.
Today, Colleen is Volleyball New Zealand’s high performance manager. But straight out of high school, she studied early childhood education and went on to manage a string of early learning centres.
“It was highlighted to me not so long ago the parallels between early childhood and high performance environments, and it’s interesting that I now look and see how similar they are,” she says.
“They’re unpredictable. Fast paced. To work in them, you need to be present and engaged, a really good problem solver with quick reactions. And where it’s really at is time spent with the children, or with the athletes.
“Their learning environments are about error, mistake, learning. How do we build an understanding of the person and their learning style? What are their needs we have to meet? And it’s also around trust and a sense of security and belonging.”
An educator and people developer at heart, Colleen has been able to successfully apply her early childhood lens to her high performance role in volleyball.
She’s driving organisational change in the sport she loves. As well as taking care of the needs of athletes and coaches, she’s also helping emerging female coaches enter the high performance space and learn on the job, from both their successes and failures.
Antonia Harrison, the New Zealand A beach volleyball head coach, is one of those women. Returning home from playing and coaching at a US university, Antonia joined Volleyball NZ in 2024 through High Performance Sport New Zealand, and the Women in High Performance Sport Residency Experience programme.
She owes a lot to Colleen, she says, who’s built a scaffolding of support around her.
“Colleen’s the glue in our sport. Behind the scenes, she does so much for our sport and our people so we can focus on coaching the athletes,” Antonia says. “Her goal is to leave the sport in a better place, and she’s doing that so well.”
In a small, nimble sport that’s thinking outside the square, Colleen has also established a women’s working group, which has been groundbreaking in the sport – giving women a forum where they can speak openly and feel supported. “They are the voice of change,” says Colleen, who’s now on the FIVB empowerment commission.
“You have to think about the little girls out there who, in 20 years’ time, work for Volleyball New Zealand, and it’s a kick-ass environment because of the change that’s happening now. If this is good for women, this is going to be good for society.
“Volleyball is a sport that’s growing massively, and I feel really privileged to be in the position I’m in.”
Colleen Campbell has a long history in coaching both indoor and beach volleyball. She coached with her husband, international beach volleyball referee Richard Casutt, at junior men’s national level before they moved to Adelaide for five years.
There, she coached volleyball in schools, then state and national programmes, learning in the junior high performance environment and attending the beach volleyball junior world championships.
When the couple moved back to Auckland, Colleen coached a senior men’s team in the New Zealand Club Championships for 2 years.
After Colleen became “a late mum” eight years ago, she took on a five-hour-a-week job as the performance manager at Volleyball NZ.
“I had a female CE, and it was a very inclusive environment for a mum with a young child. We’d have meetings outside so my daughter could run around in the park,” she says.
Working with coaches around their national camps, Colleen prioritised relationship building, then understanding the challenges and putting in systems and processes around recruitment, athlete selection and planning.
After the interruption of a global pandemic, Colleen’s role accelerated. International funding from FIVB enabled Volleyball NZ to invest in beach coaches ahead of the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
After the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, former top Kiwi player, Jason Lochhead, returned home with a stellar CV coaching international teams to the Olympics, and helped revive New Zealand’s beach volleyball programme (which is now based in Tauranga, Jason’s home city). Craig Seuseu, another Kiwi legend who coached Germany at the 2012 Olympics, is also part of the coaching team.
Now the longest serving employee at Volleyball NZ, Colleen now works 32 hours a week. Based in Auckland, she has the flexibility to work around the needs of her family.
“It’s a small organisation with not a lot of resource, so people have to do multiple roles. It can be exhausting, and the big challenge is what are we going to do really well? We can’t be everything to everybody all the time. Even though that caring, nurturing side of women makes us feel we have to solve all the problems, all the time, that can be your superpower, but it can be your nemesis too.”
Colleen has implemented her personal values across the organisation, setting up groups to function better together. One of the areas she’s been most interested in is growing the number of women’s coaches in volleyball.
“I was really inquisitive around the data and research around women coaching. We needed more enablers,” she says. “Then I was super curious around how we retain women in our organisation.”
So Colleen set up a women’s working group within the sport, focused on recruiting, retaining and rewarding women in the organisation. “Most of our women turn up; and we now meet monthly,” she says.
“As a result of those meetings, these women have felt more confident in the organisation, and now have a forum where they can share their stories in a way they feel safe. There’s a contextual environment for them. They’ve created a network and a sense of people understanding them.”
The working group are also helping to understand considerations for women in recruitment so shifts can happen. “That’s the biggest piece we are gaining clarity on right now,” Colleen says.
“They way we write job descriptions is terrible. Are our values around the jobs they’re going to do, and the skill sets they’ve got, or are they around their personal attributes first and foremost? If we’re not a people-focused organization, then women are going to get lost or they’re not going to apply for a position, because it’s all about the tasks they’ll do.
“So why not create our job descriptions, and that’s the last thing they see. Let’s not make it 30 bullet points; let’s make it five.”
The women’s working group feedback is shared at senior leadership meetings “They now have a platform and an opportunity to be heard,” Colleen says.
Kim Smith, a former Black Fern and Volley Fern, was the first woman to take up a Women in High Performance Sport Residency Experience with Volleyball NZ. A secondary school teacher, Kim’s 12-month role at Volleyball NZ started in 2023 as Performance Coach Advisor for Women and Girls.
“When Kim was part of our organisation, we changed the way we recruited coaches,” Colleen says. “The first interview was learning about them as a person, then the next meeting was about their coaching credentials and philosophy on how they would shape the programme.”
Change hasn’t moved as fast as Colleen hoped. “It will only move if someone leads it and keeps making sure that’s part of the conversation at an SLT level and a recruitment level,” she says.
Kim’s work during her residency was innovational. She introduced C.O.D-E F, a mentoring and coach development programme specifically for female coaches aspiring to coach national volleyball teams. Before the residency, Volleyball NZ had just two female coaches – that increased to five coaches at a national level during that year.
“We wanted to make sure this piece of work honoured all the women brave enough to give their voice to research that was able to address what was missing for women,” Colleen says. “With C.O.D–E F, we wanted to create a bespoke programme designed by women for women but had key principles aligned to what the research was saying was missing.
“What’s been significant is that cohort of 13 women stay connected, and they still have a network of support they regularly engage with. It’s sad the programme didn’t continue, but that’s not to say it won’t be part of something in the future.”
One of those women, NZ U19 beach volleyball coach Liz Hanna, was then accepted into HPSNZ’s Te Hāpaitanga coach development programme.
Antonia Harrison was at the University of North Florida – where she’d played, studied then stayed on for another two years to coach – when a conversation with Jason Lochhead encouraged her to return home to work with up-and-coming beach volleyball players.
Colleen had asked beach coaches Jason Lochhead and Craig Seuseu if they would support Antonia in a two-year residency. “I’m not the person on the sand, or the coaching expert. It has to be driven by them, and be something they see value in doing, because it’s actually real value for her and for the sport,” she says.
Both men saw the value of the opportunity, including boosting the number of top women coaches in the sport. “Given we’re a sport that is truly 50:50 gender in athletes, and super strong at high school level, I think it’s hugely important to make sure we have representation across both genders in coaching and leadership,” Craig says. “So having women like Antonia leading the day camps, organising the drills and holding people accountable, is really important.
“It’s equally important for the guys to see we have strong women in leadership as well. The boys have completely bought into Antonia’s culture and way of doing things. She’s ticked every single box around connection with athletes, structure and debriefs and things like that. She’s managed to command a lot of respect with the guys and the girls.”
Antonia works with just over 20 athletes in the pre-high performance environment. “I’m loving it. Any day on the beach is a good day,” she says.
Jason and Craig, with their Olympic-level coaching knowledge, are perfect mentors. Antonia runs weekend camps with her squad, with Jason as her assistant. He meets her once a week online, Craig meets her once a week on the sand, and they also support her at tournaments around the national tour. Antonia also attends high performance meetings to learn about the environment some of her athletes will go into.
Colleen also plays a major role in Antonia’s development. “Colleen is super caring and super approachable, and she’s been a really cool sounding board,” Antonia says. “No topic is off limits; you can chat on anything.
“She knows a lot about like volleyball and she knows people really well and provides great perspective and context. Nothing is ever a burden – she’s always asking, ‘Where can I help, how can I make an impact?’ It’s so cool to work alongside her, Jason and Craig and keep developing what we’re building.”
To continue her development, Antonia will coach NZ A teams in international competition and attend the beach volleyball world championships in Adelaide later this year, to help determine where her knowledge gaps lie. A major part of the Residency Experience programme is giving coaches the space to fail and learn, with support around them, so they can transition to high performance.
“She needs to have that real-life experience to do it,” says Colleen. “I really believe you have to set environments up for people to be successful, and then if they fail, they can get back up because they know the environment is supportive of their development. If we don’t expose her to that, she’s not going to close that gap of understanding.”
During a meeting with Colleen, Antonia admitted she struggled to recognise her own strengths, questioning whether she was making a meaningful impact on the athletes or if they were progressing enough under her coaching.
“I think the biggest gap is her seeing herself as being the best person to coach at a high performance level,” Colleen says. “We have a responsibility as a coaching group to nurture and develop that with her, and it can only go at the pace that she’s ready for. But we have to be hyper aware of what we’re doing and understand what she needs from us.
“Jason is super invested in Antonia and NZ A, because he knows they’re part of the future plan for our programme. We’re going to have more teams, so we know we’re going to need more coaches.”
For Jason – who’s coached in Vanuatu, Canada and the US – working with Colleen has helped bring Volleyball NZ together as a team. “One of the special things about Colleen is that she’s so good at reaching out to each of us individually, setting up meetings and getting chats in with our players. She so good at creating bonds with people, she makes us feel connected,” he says.
“As with every sport there’s always going to be drama and bumps in the road. But she’s great at having those conversations and being straightforward when you need her to be… to kind of hit people with a hard truth, which can help get through stuff.”
Colleen sees herself as the person who puts all the puzzle pieces together.
“My job is to help support and guide. The coaches do all the work on the sand, and I do work off the sand to build the puzzle,” she says. “Jason can’t be everything to everyone; he’s got to have someone who can see the issue, ask the questions, put the puzzle piece over there, then start again.”
