More than 75 female coaches, guests and speakers attended the first ever Female Coaching Conference at Surrey Sports Park, England on Saturday 29 April. The conference was open to all sports, all levels and all nationalities and gave coaches attending the chance to connect, share and develop together – raising the profile of female coaches.
Working in partnership with the Female Coaching Network (FCN), Project 500: More Women, Better Coaching offered female coaches the opportunity to hear from Olympic Gold Medal winning hockey coach Karen Brown and one of the first four female coaches to gain the Football Pro-licence, Lois Fiddler.
Karen spoke passionately about the importance of self-reflection for players, coaches and support staff whilst Lois spoke openly about her journey in football and her lasting comment to the conference was ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’.
The day included workshops delivered by the FCN on speed development, postural analysis, mobility for warm ups and the online world. The conference ended with a panel discussion by 5 Project 500 coaches, who shared their experiences and took questions from the room.
The conference provided a fantastic networking opportunity and despite closing at 5pm coaches were still networking with each other two hours later.
Delegates were invited to ‘keep connected’ through a series of webinars to build upon conference topics, online platforms, #womenswednesday discussions and informal coaching chit chat sessions in their local area.
Feedback from the delegates on the day was overwhelmingly positive and social media activity was awash with comments using the hash-tag #FemaleCoach2017.
‘I enjoyed the workshops and loved talking to other sports/females about coaching and experiences’
‘Reassuring to have such honest talks from female coaches in sport, it was great to have the opportunity to learn, interact and network’
‘Great event, please do more… can we have two days next year?’
The day was a great celebration for women’s coaching and the team hope to continue supporting female coaches in making this an annual event.