“It reinforced for me the importance of leadership and building meaningful relationships, trust and working together with your paddlers rather than having a main focus on achievement and winning” Mary Davis

DBNSW would like to extend a big congratulations to the four DBNSW women Mary Davis, Sylvia Wong, Cat Anderson and Deb Clarke who recently successfully completed the Sport NSW Fast Track for Female Coaches course.

Last month the course came to a conclusion, with participating coaches sharing their main take-aways, and what they can’t wait to put in to action.

Over the last six weeks, Mary, Slyvia Cat and Deb along with other inspiring women from other sports have heard from experts and leaders from around sport – and have spent time developing their coaching philosophy, conversational and leadership skills, as well as an introduction to the psychology of coaching, the methods for coaching development level athletes and how to establish and maximise their impact as a coach.

“I found the course very thought provoking as a lot of the sessions focused on helping you to reflect on what drives you as a coach” said participant Mary Davis.

“It also reinforced for me that it does not matter what the talent level of the athlete or team is, that basic technique training is always relevant and should be included continually. Often I see in dragon boating that coaches forget about the technique training once paddlers are experienced paddlers” explained Mary.

Deb Clarke commented that “the Fast Track course provided the opportunity to create extensive networks with elite coaches from a variety of sports. It was highly useful to draw on the breadth of perspectives of the coaches.”

The Fast Track for Female Coaches course was designed to connect aspiring female coaches, provide exclusive insight and further develop their coaching and leadership behaviours and competencies - building capability and readiness as they fast track through the coaching talent pathway.

The course is for any aspiring NSW based female coaches who:

• Wants to develop skills beyond the technical and tactical
• Aspires to transition into elite sport coaching
• Currently has a minimum level one or equivalent qualification in her chosen sport

Cat Anderson another graduate of the course explained how the course allowed her to reflect on who she coaches and why she coaches. “For me it allowed me to reflect on who I coach and why I coach. I was able to solidify my own coaching philosophy and approach to the paddlers I support, giving me some additional tools to draw on to support them in their own paddling journey whatever that may be.”

Sylvia Wong explained "as High-Performance Director for AusDBF, I have overlayed what I have learnt from the course onto the Aurora Development Program (ADP) so to maximise the program and ensuring the growth is not just for NSW, but for Australia as a whole." 

"I look forward to seeing more female coaches in NSW to nominate and be part of this worthwhile learning experience"

DBNSW is proud to support the 4 women through the course in 2021 and once again send our congratulations to them and all the women who participated in the course. We look forward to the course returning in 2022 where we hope to support the next group of Dragon Boating women as they continue their coaching and leadership pathway in the sport.