In my role as Club President this year at the University of Warwick Women’s Football and Futsal Club (UWWFC), I have been working with UWWFC Vice President, Ella Cowell, Warwick Sport and BUCS to put together and lead on a female and non-binary coaching development programme. The primary goal of this programme is to develop new female and non-binary coaches to lead and support the sustainable growth of the women’s game, both on the university campus and in our wider community. The decision to initiate this programme came about after discovering that, in England, only 5% of FA-qualified coaches are female. On top of this, at our club alone, our entire staff team are male. This was something we felt we had the platform to change and so last summer we applied for funding from BUCS to run this programme. After a successful application process, the club secured £2500 of funding from BUCS to put towards the programme which has been running since September last year and throughout the 24/25 season.

The Coaching Development Programme is made up of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) seminars led by professionals in the industry, practical coaching experiences, access to free coaching courses and the opportunity to connect with the Birmingham County FA and networks from our partner club, Rugby Borough FC. The programme is open and made accessible for all female and non-binary students at the University of Warwick regardless of their previous coaching experience. Throughout the year there have been three separate application cycles in September, November and January. Across the three cycles, we now have 21 student coach participants on the programme, all of which have been proactive in completing coaching courses and peer coaching training sessions throughout the year. It has been amazing to witness the growth in confidence and skills of so many of the programme participants, many of which had never coached before. For many of these participants, the coaching development programme has kickstarted their coaching journey with a few participants starting to coach externally within the local community.

With the progress this programme is having, the future of female coaches is looking bright and myself and Ella want to say a massive thank you to Warwick Sport and BUCS for making this programme possible.