The past weekend saw 22 international coaches who joined together for the second of two mentor training weekends aiming to address some of the issues faced by female coaches. The training was also attended by Ms Jackie Newton from United Kingdom and Mr Evadros Votsis from Cyprus, coaches’ mentors by the European University Sports Association (EUSA).

The programme focused particularly at the higher levels of coaching, and in particular to provide the participants the opportunity to build a strong network of coaches, plan how to strengthen and support female coaches, how to strengthen female coaches' well being and how to increase the number of female coaches.



The training was held in Helsinki, Finland between May 20 and 22, 2016. Mrs Satu Kaski, Sport Psychologist, was the tutor of the meeting and followed up on the work done on the first weekend before moving the discussions further to explore how the participants can go back to their organisations with intent to make a difference after being a part of this project.

The group identified social and cultural, economical, institutional and organisational reasons for the lack of women in coaching and support is required in many different ways. The group feel it is important that there is a ‘top-down’ as well as a ‘bottom-up’ approach and that the issues need to be lifted up to a higher, political level. Many of the group are already working hard to support women through mentoring programmes but women need more to be done by the organisations in terms of ‘opening doors’ so that they truly have equal opportunities.



There are many examples of coaches appointed on the basis of their many years of experience or results. This creates a problem as the coaching environment is male dominated and women have less opportunity to break through when this criteria is high on the agenda. Competency needs to be given a much higher priority than years of experience or results, after all, a coach who has thirty years experience but does the same thing year after year may not be improving whereas a less experienced coach who is enthusiastic about his or her own development may actually be more competent and have greater potential. Additionally, there are many examples of results achieved despite the coaching rather than because of it.

The weekend finished with a session on well-being in recognition that the participants can only help and support others if they also look after themselves. Although this was the final weekend for the group to officially be together, they will keep in touch and continue to support each other and share ideas.



The SCORE project - Strengthening Coaching with the Objective to Raise Equality, is coordinated by the European Non-Governmental Sports Organisation (ENGSO) together with partners, including the European University Sports Association (EUSA) under the Erasmus+ Sport Programme as Collaborative Partnership initiative. For more information, please see www.score-coaching.eu.