Angie’s name will be familiar to many within the high performance sector as coach of Tokyo Olympic bronze medallist and 2022 World Champion trampolinist, Dylan Schmidt.
She was the only New Zealand woman coach at Paris 2024 to have an athlete finish in the top eight.
But her love of gymnastics and trampolining in particular goes back a long way, to when she was as young as eight years old, being coached by her now 82-year-old father.
Coaching must be in the blood.
By the age of 12 Angie was helping her father coach the ‘youngsters’ at the Mt Albert Gymnastics Club and at 16 she became a ‘real’ coach.
“I started coaching three to four nights a week at the Auckland Academy of Gymnastics and learnt under a Romanian coach who was trying to develop gymnastics into a high performance sport in New Zealand,” says Angie.
As a qualified teacher, Angie’s qualifications in child development and psychology made her think she could help people learn faster. Added to this, she is a qualified strength and conditioning trainer. “I’m pretty self-taught and I believed I could use my learning and training to do it better.”
Three and a half years teaching and coaching in England gave her an international perspective and something more.
“When I returned to New Zealand I knew what my goal was – I wanted to create an Olympian. I kept asking myself what would it take and how could I learn to do that.”
Angie was one of the earliest Prime Minister’s Coach Scholarship recipients and for seven successive years she used her grants to learn from the best trampolining coaches in the world. “They welcomed me with open arms and these experiences were instrumental in my development as a coach.”
Her dream of helping make a world champion unknowingly took a big step forward when she started coaching six-year-old Dylan Schmidt. Now 27, Dylan has been a huge part of Angie’s life and coaching journey as she guided him through age grade world championships, Youth Olympics, World Championships and Olympic campaigns.
While Angie’s feet have only been under her desk at HPSNZ for a fortnight, she says her role as a coaching consultant fulfils her need to live a life of service, to impact and develop more people.
“Coaches have a massive influence on sporting environments and on young people’s lives. We can help shape them, they then make an impact, and so the ripple effect of positive influence starts.
Angie is also keenly aware of the challenges coaches face. “Coaching is hard, especially for low profile sports yet it is possibly the most influential role in a high performance environment.”
She cautions aspiring coaches. “It has to be your passion but if you are burnt out, you’re no good to anyone. I’ve learnt, often the hard way, that coaches need the capacity to look after themselves.”
