The Life Of A Coach

By Cerys Evans

I have been coaching at Ael y Bryn club for about 3 years, helping to start and encourage new players and develop young talent within the club. This has helped me improve my confidence and skills within coaching along with trying to improve the players confidence and abilities. While here I received support and advice from Neil O’Connell.

I recently applied for the Aspire to Coach programme, which has opened so many doors for me within my coaching journey. Including going to Slovakia for ETTU annual women’s seminar, where I was the youngest coach attending by a mile, which was noticed by not only the ETTU representative but also the ITTF representative. At the seminar I learnt new teaching techniques that are used throughout Europe and I have tried to apply these to the one to one sessions I run.

Gaining a selection to coach for Wales was a great honour and it was a wonderful experience being with the team in Guernsey, feeling the atmosphere in the hall and gaining the experience with the players against a range of opposition. I’ve recently been selected to go to the Isle of Man to coach and I am looking forward to go and gain more experience, and I am excited to have the opportunity to coach for Wales again.

I’ve recently moved to Plymouth to complete a degree in Sport Rehabilitation at Plymouth Marjon University, which is an exciting chapter in my life and I am hoping to continue developing my coaching skills by joining a local club or by starting a club in my university.

In the foreseeable future I would like to continue coaching and encouraging new players and helping them to achieve as high a standard as possible as I love seeing people enjoying playing a sport they may never thought of trying. I would love the chance to continue coaching for Wales, potentially becoming a national coach. As a player I would just like to continue playing start training properly as I haven’t been training due to A levels and coaching in recent times.

Lets see what happens…