Sports Coach/​Official

My name's Angie and I am a sports coach.
I'm specifically a water polo coach, and a little bit of swimming too.
But I spend my days on the poolside,
teaching kids how to throw a ball. A typical day for me and my job is an
early morning, you know,
I wake up at 5 o'clock because we like to get in the pool early. Other times,
you know,
I'm back in the office preparing my session plans and developing any kind of
tour opportunities we might have. So that will be, you know,
potentially going overseas to play. And, and you know,
my role as the coach is also running the budgets for that organising
accommodation. So what I'm doing here is a big part of my job.
So I'm just analysing our performance.
You can work out where things didn't go to plan or things that you've gotta
improve so I can adapt my training to be able to drill those things to make us
better. I got into water polo at the age of 13 and it was just a little bit more
interactive than the swimming.
All of my experiences as an athlete has definitely led me down the path of being
a coach.
And if I can give 1 person or 2 people some of the opportunities I've had as
a person, then, you know, my job has been well done.
During a training session, I probably do about 5,000 steps. I'm constantly walking around.
Coaching involves a lot of things,
so from planning and preparing a training session to actually delivering it and
managing a lot of people at the same time. Look,
I think there's 2 really key skills. The first 1 is communication. I mean,
especially in this environment, you can see that there's a lot going on.
So I need to be able to communicate with a group. But then the other side of
that is being able to plan a good training and being able to walk on the pool
side ready,
prepared so I can execute a really engaging training. The qualifications to
become a coach are a little bit different from sport to sport.
I haven't needed to have any qualifications specifically to coach water polo.
I do wish, if I could go back to 18-year-old Angie,
that I had studied sports coaching at university,
it would've been really handy to be able to study that. You really
integrate into a young person's life, being their coach. You know,
you've got a bond because you are helping them on their pathway to potentially,
you know, being an Olympian. And it's a pretty important job, I think,
and I think it's a pretty rewarding job at the same time.
When I'm on the pool side, it doesn't feel like work. It's,
it's 100 % enjoyment for me.