The 2024 season was another very successful year for Coach Development in MWFA, with more than 900 coaches supported across a variety of coaching courses and workshops, as well as training session and match visits. Overall, 15% of coaches supported through courses and mentoring were females.
This total does include a number of repeat customers, however this is also an indication of the positive experience that coaches have had when attending our courses, and the ongoing value they provide. Similarly, more than 30 coaches from outside of the Northern Beaches travelled to take advantage of the opportunity to attend our Coach Development events.
797 coaches in total attended 12 x MiniRoos courses, 3 x Foundation of Football courses, 9 x Coach Workshops, 6 x Game Leader workshops, 2 x club based coach meetings and 1 x C-Diploma.
Despite many weeks of washed out training sessions and matches, we were still able to support 116 coaches through personalised mentoring with their actual teams in their own environments, which is the most effective way to help them learn ‘on the job’.
The combined total is not as many as our record season in 2023 where we supported over 1,000 coaches, but we will likely reach a similar number once 2 further Coach Workshops, another C-Diploma and the Future Coaches Program, all scheduled to be completed before the end of the year, are added in. This is largely due to the high number of dates made available across different clubs and spread out across the entire season, providing plenty of follow up development opportunities to encourage long term learning.
MWFA Coach Development Manager Eugene Lawrenz was obviously very satisfied with this outcome, after a very busy but productive year despite the challenges with the weather.
“It’s been a complicated season, but I’m very happy with the overall result. Credit to all of the coaches who develop themselves for the sake of their players, especially those who’ve come back more than once. Most importantly, although there is still plenty of work to do, every year we are seeing an increasing number of players having a positive experience in the sport, with more engaging and game-realistic training sessions, and player-centered coaching. I would like to express my thanks to all of the clubs who hosted and helped promote all of our events this season, as well as acknowledge the hard work and quality of support that was provided to coaches by my team, in particular the Coach Mentors who made a big effort to be available as often as they did: Gregor Agic, Marilinda Winter, James Mitchell, Catriona Ormond, Sai van Wegen, Patty Faria and Gareth Banks.”
The MWFA Coach Development team would like to wish every player, coach, club volunteer and parent a safe and happy holidays, and we look forward to seeing more quality football in 2025.
