ICoachGirls Part 1: Best practice and female coaches
ICoachGirls is a project that aims to promote and increase physical activity and sport in primary school girls. Find out more from coach and research Dr Ruth Brazier
ICoachGirls seeks to promote and increase physical activity and sport amongst primary school age girls in local communities across six different countries, including Ireland, Hungary, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands. It’s a sister project of ICoachKids. Dr Ruth Brazier explains more in part 1 of the 2-part series:
ICoachKids is a not-for-profit global movement which aims to educate and upskill coaches all around the world.
It started as as quite a small project, and it's kind of grown into a global movement which has coaches engaging with it from all over the world.
We have hundreds of thousands of monthly users from over 150 countries across the world. All our resources are are translatable into different languages.
We have a website which hosts free resources and more formal educational work including accredited online courses.
ICoachGirls is an offshoot of ICoachKids which focuses on two things:
Girls participate less than boys in sport.
Women are less active as coaches.
Girls are less physically active, they're less engaged in organised sport and therefore they are less likely to get the benefits that we know sport brings.
One of the main focuses is to get more primary school age girls active. We’ve defined that as of defined that a girls aged 5-12. Countries have slightly different ages for primary school, but we’re focused on girls 5-12 years old.
ICoachKids started in 2016 and ICoachGirls started in 2022. We worked with six partner organisations across multiple countries in Europe. As part of that, we delivered play centres for girls as well as recruited and educated more coaches.
So far, 1200 girls have engaged with the play centres across Europe and over 300 women have been educated as coaches.
There’s also a growing legacy as the play centres have continued in some places, even after the funding has gone.
The initial project has engaged over 1000 girls and over 300 coaches and will hopefully continue to grow even after the project has officially finished.
Introducing girls to sport
We have resources on our website which are useful to coaches. One of the first ones we produced was a guide about reintroducing girls to sport and physical activity.
It's not rugby specific, it's not kind of specific to any sport in the slightest. However, they contain generic tips that are helpful.
For primary school age girls, we have 10 principles for getting girls into sport. One of them is to offer a variety of activities and variations.
We know by research we’ve conducted that a lot of sports are very male dominated. It's created by men for boys.
Offering a variety of variations of activities can help recruit and retain girls. Starting them in a multisport activity where they're starting to learn the basic rugby skills like handling, throwing, catching, dodging and tagging might lead them to a game of rugby.
However, if you throw them into a complete game of rugby at the age of 7-8, they might struggle compared to a boy who might have been more encouraged by their parents to be engaged in rough and tumble type play.
Think about how you're starting girls and where you're starting them from.
Examples to be inspired by
The second guide that we produced are examples of best practise. It features 11 different programmes, that are based across Europe that gets girls into sport in different days.
This includes a programme called Daughters and Dads, which really focuses on the role of fathers in daughters.
Fathers might traditionally encourage their sons to be active, but can we also get them to encourage their daughters to be active. Can fathers coach their daughters in sports such as cricket, football and rugby?
“Daughters and Dads aimed to increase physical activity levels, sports skills and social-emotional wellbeing of girls aged 5-11 and increase their dads’ confidence and ability to act as role models in relation to their daughters’ participation.” - Daughters and Dads
Another example of best practice is UEFA Disney Playmakers which contains storytelling as a way of encouraging girls to participant in sport
“UEFA Playmakers is a sports activity like no other that delivers a fun and safe introduction to learning football, for 5-8 year old girls, through movement, play and the magic of Disney storytelling.”- UEFA Disney Playmakers
Why is increasing the number of female coaches important?
When I was growing up playing football, I didn't have a female coach. When I was leaving school and thinking about what I wanted to do, coaching wasn't a natural pathway for me.
It took me a little bit longer and I kind of meandered around before I really fell into coaching. If I'd have had a strong female kind of coach, I might have done that a bit sooner. I might have kind of believed in that pathway a bit more.
It’s important that girls see that sport is a viable career path for them.
Research shows that a lot of male coaches, not through any fault of their own, don’t understand what it's like to be a 6 year old girl.
They don't understand what it's like be the only girl in the group of boys. Girls feel safe and more confident when they have a female coach. However, this is not to say they don’t feel confident when coached by males.
There's a terrific number of male coaches who are fantastic allies and fantastic coaches. However, for some girls, having a female coach can be quite an important aspect of starting to be active or staying active.
We have guides on mentoring programmes which can help develop female coaches. Similar to girls playing sport, sometimes being a female coach means you’re the only one in an organisation.
Organisations should empower female coaches and make sure they’re not on their own. A mentoring programme should ensure a club isn’t a boys club where men who have connections or played alongside someone have access to pathways.
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