Issue date
An army of newly-qualified coaches will be gearing up to put their new-found knowledge and skills to use over the summer season.
A total of 86 new learn to sail dinghy coaches have graduated out of eight coaching courses held around the country over the winter months. The most recent learn to sail course was run by the Motutapu Outdoor Education Camp, who recently affiliated to Yachting New Zealand.
A further 15 individuals are currently enrolled in our new online race coach course and Yachting New Zealand coach development manager Kirsten Moratz will soon be heading to Napier to run an assessment for several soon-to-be race coaches there.
A learn to sail coaching course will also be held at the Murrays Bay Sailing Club on December 17-18 and you can find all the details, including the registration form, here.
Moratz has been busy since joining Yachting New Zealand in August and has updated the coaching resources page on our website.
"It is now structured so you can search resources by your coaching qualification," Moratz explained. "This way, it should be easier to find things that are relevant to you.
"As always, if you ever have a resource that you think should be something other coaches would benefit from, send it my way and I can put it on the list.
"To that end, please use the Yachting New Zealand Coaches Forum on Facebook to ask for help and spread resources. I am aware that many coaches across the country can be quite isolated at times and don’t always have other coaches to go to or to work with, so I would love this to become a collaboration space where coaches across the country can come together and learn from each other."
Moratz will soon start visiting some yacht clubs around the country and checking out their learn to sail programmes.
She's keen to see what clubs are doing with their coaching programmes, particularly if they are running coach development training with young coaches or are doing something unique with their learn to sail programme, and invited clubs to contact her if they wanted to chat or would like to invite her to their club.
Moratz has also set up both a Yachting New Zealand coaching Instagram (@YNZcoach) and Tiktok (@YNZcoaching) account for coaches.
"I am figuring them out as I go, so if you have something you think I should share on either that is relevant to coaching in New Zealand, please send it my way."
