Women in HP Sport connects New Zealand aspiring HP coaches with Aussie counterparts
The women from 10 New Zealand sports – Cycling, Rowing, Diving, Snow Sports, Athletics, Tennis, Touch, Golf, Rugby League and Netball – joined 38 Australian women coaches in the three day programme held at the AIS in Canberra.
HPSNZ Women in High Performance Sport (WiHPS) lead, Helene Wilson, led the New Zealand group and was heavily involved in the co-design and facilitation of what was the launch of a wider Women in Coaching project across the Sport NZ Group.
Partnering with a country like Australia means access to a greater number of highly credible and successful women who are high performance coaches.
The programme provided a unique opportunity to hear real stories and gain important insights from over 50 support crew coaches that included New Zealand coaches, Marianne Delany-Hosek and Barbara Kendall, and a number of medal winning Olympic coaches.
“To have access to the vast experiences and variance in the journeys of women in high performance coaching all in one room is something you can’t replicate in New Zealand,” says Helene.
She also called out the cross cultural exchange embedded into the three days. “It was extremely powerful to partner with and thread First Nations principles throughout the programme which we were able to complement with our own cultural lens.”
The 10 New Zealand women were selected from 64 applicants, and their coaching backgrounds reinforce the quality of qualified people who are interested and motivated to coach at a high level.
“Of the applications nearly 90% have transitioned from athlete to coach and 80% of them were athletes at national and international levels,” says Helene.
One-third of the group are currently coaching international level athletes and 23% are currently Para coaches.
Following the programme, an extensive review has been undertaken, and feedback from the New Zealand participants has played an important role in designing the evolution of further coach development for women in New Zealand.
Feedback ranged from learnings about finding your own coaching style, gaining a better understanding of how to connect the dots between theory and practice, what good coaching looks like in action and a clearer understanding that all coaches are on the same journey but the pathway may look different.
Marianne says that in her role as a support coach, being able to join a room of female coaches across all levels of coaching was very powerful.
“It reinforced my passion for coaching after some time out as well as a real want to guide others on their journey.
“The trans-Tasman opportunity made it even more powerful in terms of who was in the room, but also learning that we all share the same insecurities, vulnerabilities and frustrations,” says Marianne.
“Sharing my relevant experience from navigating the HP environment as an athlete, Olympic coach, and my experience in global sporting leadership was very rewarding, especially when seeing that ‘ah ha’ moment around the table or the answer of ‘I hadn’t seen it from that perspective before’”, says Barbara.
After what Helene says was an extremely successful first up ASPIRE programme, the next steps in New Zealand are to design and roll it out here for a bigger pool of aspiring high performance coaches.
“Marianne and Barbara will continue to check in regularly with our inaugural group but the ability to capture and widen the New Zealand talent pool for high performance coaches and to connect with the wider Sport NZ Women’s coaching initiative is immense,” says Helene.