First cab off the rank earlier this month for programme leader, Christian Penny, was a cross-sport intelligence building event between Canoe Racing women’s head coach Gordon Walker and athletes Dame Lisa Carrington and Alecia Hoskin, and members of Cycling New Zealand’s sprint programme including lead coach, Nick Flyger.
With an eye to increasingly adopting this cross-sport approach, Coach Accelerator Te Tūāpapa is kicking off a series of events which use ‘wise heads’ from different sports to inject new thinking and approaches as coaches set their sights on upcoming key pinnacle events from RWC 2023 to Paris 2024 and Milan 2026.
Christian sums up the task ahead for coaches as “What is the lift and shift you need for your key pinnacle event?”
“When I put that to Cycling sprint coach Nick Flyger he was keen to understand how Gordon Walker and his athletes had applied a tikanga marae frame inside a campaign, in particular leading into Tokyo 2020,” says Christian. “In particular he and Cycling NZ wanted to look at how to make its programme more indigenous and was keen to hear how Canoe Racing had approached this.
“What was exciting was the way the team from Canoe Racing was happy to share how this worked for their athletes, coaches and support staff and the importance of a strong focus on shared responsibility and leveraging differences.
“A key outtake from the information Gordon, Lisa and Alecia shared was how this had strengthened the shared approach and clarified roles in order to make a truly aligned attack on a series of medals,” says Christian.
“Athletes from both sports reported a lot of excitement and inspiration meeting peers who are in the system but in different campaigns.”
To broaden the reach of the kōrero, support staff were also provided with a space and time to quiz Gordon and his athletes.
November will see Coach Accelerator facilitate more cross sport engagement and follows on from the involvement of new HPSNZ board member and softball coaching legend Don Tricker who spent time with Rowing NZ’s coaches prior to the recent World Champs.
“Don’s wise head, past experience and steady hand was an invaluable new perspective for rowing coaches and we are bringing together the former rugby league Kiwis and NRL coach, Steve Kearney, with Snow Sports in Wanaka,” says Christian.
Providing wider reach to the coaching community, Coach Accelerator Te Tūāpapa has also just launched a series of seven workshops with a focus on communications, especially performance communication conversations.
The first of the seven workshops, which are led by external specialist leadership facilitators Anna Russell and Jim Wicks, was held earlier this week with up to 25 coaches eventually going through the series around the country.
“A key goal of the two-day workshops is to get a quick uplift in communications skills before March 2023. To date coaches from cycling, rowing, snow sports, equestrian and triathlon have registered to be on the small group workshops,” says Christian.
