Since 2019 I have been coaching basketball, and it has come to be an activity that I find great joy and meaning in. As all things are, coaching was a skill that I had to build and learn over time.

I first began coaching at Lightning hoops basketball club when I was in year 7. I was in charge of an Under 10’s team called the Unicorns. To begin with, I was mentored by the previous coach of the Unicorns, and he taught me how to get the girls attention, how to motivate them to play and, most importantly, how to teach them the rules. I was new, and not yet a confident coach. It was a hard season, because as a coach it is essential to focus on many different things such as keeping the team engaged, making sure everyone gets the ball, coordinating substitutions, teaching them the rules and many other things. Teaching beginners is a much harder job than one might assume, and I combatted my inexperience with positivity and encouragement. It was the first time that I felt the responsibility of a role model, and the first time that I was able to see the impact of my actions on others. I continued to coach this team for 2 seasons, until I was given an under 12’s team to coach, called the Lions.

With a little bit of coaching experience under my belt, I was better equipped to start coaching my Lions team, and as Under 12’s they were a bit more experienced with basketball, so I had to adjust how I coached them and kept them engaged in basketball. My mum was a big help at this point in time, as she is a very experienced coach and was my first basketball coach ever! Together we attended a lot of coaching seminars to improve our coaching ability and learn how to be better equipped to coach our teams. Around this time, I also started coaching a new Under 12’s team at All Saints College basketball club, which I was super excited to do! My team was a team of year 4’s and after our first loss of 48-0, we had a lot to work on.

I coached my Lions team for 2 seasons, and I had the pleasure of coaching them to a grand final win in the final season. Unfortunately, I had to give up coaching my Lions team because of other extra curricular commitments, however the team taught me so much about coaching, and being a role model in general.

Being young (and rather emotional), my biggest challenge with coaching my ASC team for the first season was convincing them to not give up, and to not look at the scoreboard. The girls required a lot of motivation and positive reinforcement, which took at least two seasons to build on. It was not easy trying to convince the girls to keep playing on days where it was hot, and we were losing according to the score board, and it required a lot of patience and understanding to try and convince them to actually play and not give up halfway through the game. Once we moved past that stage, the girls seemed to have a lot more fun playing on the court, being with their friends and learning new things, which was a huge relief to see my work paying off. The thing I enjoy most about coaching is see a new skill that a player has been working on a lot, in training and in their own time, pay off in a game. I love being able to watch the girls form new friendships with their team mates and fall in love with a sport that I have adored for years.

Coaching helped me develop my own basketball ability, and sympathise with all of the people who had to coach me between the ages of 5-13. It is a skill that requires, patience, communication, understanding and most importantly leadership. It has helped me grow in so many ways and has helped me to learn how to become a better role model for young people.