Программа Evolve помогла женщине-тренеру преодолеть барьеры и возглавить развитие кадров в крикетном сообществе

I started coaching in cricket seven years ago, when I came home after my first year at university. Our house backed onto the cricket field at Cheadle Hulme Cricket Club, my brother played there, and my mum said: “You need to get out of the house and do something.” I went with my brother to junior training on Friday night, shadowed the coaches for a few weeks, and by the end of the season I was taking the U13s and doing a bit with the girls, too. Without sounding cheesy, coaching cricket probably saved me a little bit at a time when I really needed something positive. I needed another community to be part of and that’s exactly what it gave me. After university, I worked for Lancashire Cricket Foundation as the Cricket Development Officer for Manchester and Tameside. Every year, they put staff forward for coach development. I’d been coaching other sports since I was 11, so I expressed an interest and I was fortunate to be part of the first Evolve cohort. Evolve is a pillar of The Metro Bank Girls in Cricket Fund that gives female coaches on the ECB Coach Developer programme a year of individual support from a Regional ECB Coach Developer, alongside central support from the ECB Coach Development team. The Evolve programme came about at the perfect time. Although I was happy doing the coach developer programme at Derby, having that extra support through Evolve – in partnership with The Metro Bank Girls in Cricket Fund – meant I wasn’t just thrown in at the deep end. Sara Begg was my National ECB Coach Developer at Derby, but with Evolve she almost acted more as a mentor. We had meetings before the course started, then met again in the month between the two modules. Having access to someone with that level of expertise in coaching, who also delivered the course, was brilliant. It meant she could answer my million different questions. Sara being there was also really valuable in other ways. It can be daunting being in a room full of men, many of whom had either played or coached cricket at a high level. My own experience was in grassroots cricket, so I was coming from a different background, but Evolve really helped me identify the areas where I needed to improve. I first became interested in coach development because I felt like I could do more in the role I was already in. I think I’ve got good energy and I’m very supportive. I don’t necessarily have the strongest cricket knowledge in the room, but I have other strengths and I felt they’d work well in being a coach developer. Since qualifying as an ECB Coach Developer, I’ve been able to bring those ideas back to Lancashire, share them with other coach developers, and implement what I’ve learned through Evolve. That’s had a huge benefit for the coaches we’re developing. A measure of how successful it’s been is that my role at Lancashire has now changed to Workforce Officer, with coach development forming a big part of my job. Everything I do now is really an embodiment of what I learned through that Evolve experience. Through Evolve, we’ve also built a network of female coach developers. It’s a really close group, and it’s been brilliant to have a community of women who can relate to one another because we’re often facing the same barriers. When I think back seven years ago to when I did my own coaching course, I was the only girl there. I was 19 and absolutely terrified. I don’t want anyone else to feel the way I felt. If there’d been someone like me there at the time, it would have made the whole experience easier and calmer. I want to be the person I needed then – and, because of Evolve, hopefully I can.