As part of Sport England’s investment into coaching, North Yorkshire Sport were tasked with implementing a national campaign in our area.
Our local insight followed the national trend in showing there are fewer female coaches than male, so we chose ‘Reach into Coaching’ to be our campaign to encourage more women to become coaches. Of all the districts in North Yorkshire, Richmondshire was chosen as our focus area as the district had the worst male: female coaching ratio, with just 21% of the workforce being women.
Seven sporting venues including leisure centres, gyms and swimming pools hosted the promotional material helping to engage 13 women into the campaign. Research shows that one of the biggest barriers to getting into coaching is the cost of the qualifications. To break down this barrier, North Yorkshire Sport released a coaching bursary of five £200 grants. The grants were used to assist the qualifications of nine women (four activators, three coaches at level one and two coaches at level two) and to help deploy them into four community clubs.
The campaign resulted in the Richmondshire workforce gender ratio to be reduced with the percentage of women raising from 21% to 40%.
One of the clubs benefiting from programme said:
We are always keen to encourage new coaches to join us at the gymnastics club - whether they be ex Gymnasts coming to the end of their career who we love to keep involved in the sport, or parents who are wanting to help out. However- there are many obstacles in the way to successfully achieving the goal of becoming a coach and North Yorkshire sport has really helped immensely with this campaign to enable girls and women to feel this is achievable. With the help of grants, advice and support to achieve their ambition and giving confidence to women to feel they should be at the top of their sport producing top athletes “