Richard joined Wesport in August 2008 from the role of Club and Volunteer Manager in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Richard has worked within a Local Authority and a National Governing Body along with his two roles within a County Sports Partnership. As a Level 3 Squash Coach he has 13 years of coaching experience as both a voluntary and paid coach.
The role of the Coaching Development Officer at Wesport is in simple terms to achieve three key aims; increase the number of coaches; increase the skills of coaches and increase the employment and deployment opportunities within the West of England. Developing strong partnerships with key agencies (locally and nationally) is key to the role's success. Consequently we work with a number of partners to ensure that not only do we have the right number of coaches to support sport in our area, but that these coaches are professionally managed, suitably qualified, sufficiently competent and appropriately rewarded.
The key factor in the success of any sports programme is having the right coach who can engage the participants and use this relationship and contact time to guide the players development. CoachWest will assist us in deploying the right coaches into the correct environments. It will also enable coaches to have increased opportunities for employment and lead towards more sustainable coaching roles.