Narrator [00:00:03] This is a Sport Australia podcast production.
Cam Tradell [00:00:08] Hello and welcome to our coaching and officiating podcast series. My name is Cam Tradell and i'm the Project Lead for Coaching and Officiating at Sport Australia. Over this series, we will look at what it takes to modernise Australia's coaching and officiating system. Each podcast, we will be joined by a special guest who will share experiences and practical tips on their topics.
Cam Tradell [00:00:31] Today, we're very, very lucky to have Sharon Hannan join us on the phone. Hello, Sharon, how are you?
Sharon Hannan [00:00:37] I'm good. Thanks, Cameron.
Cam Tradell [00:00:56] Thanks very much for your time today. It's fantastic to have you share some of your stories. You've seen a great breadth of athletics and the sport, starting at little athletics and going all the way through to the heady heights of the Olympics. I'd be keen to understand, what's your story? How did you actually get into it and how did you grow a love for coaching in the sport of athletics?
Sharon Hannan [00:59] My daughter came home from school as a nine year old saying she had a flyer and asking me if she could join athletics and we went down the local oval and little town called Gordonvale, just south of Cairns. And yeah, I was given a job to do for the season, which was pulling the tape measure through the discus. So I didn't see a great deal, but my daughter had a great deal of fun and she loved it. And I thought it was a really good environment. I was a single mum and she made lots of friends. And at the end of the season, the people running the club wanted to move athletics from Sunday morning to a weekday afternoon. But I worked probably 30 miles away at the airport. I worked for an airline called Bush Pilots, which then became Air Queensland and subsequently Qantas link. And I couldn't get there, couldn't get there from work in the afternoon. So a couple of families were in the same boat, and I contacted Queensland Little Athletics and they helped us start up a little athletic centre in Cairns. There were centres in little towns around it, Cooktown, Innisfail, Mulgrave and Tablelands, Atherton Tablelands and so there was there was prototypes there and people who knew what they were doing and so we called a public meeting and we got started and we had eighty three kids in our first season. That was just crazy. And then we got stuck into it. Our first zone championships were in Cooktown. We bought a rattly old school bus with no windows, you know, things like that way back in the day then. At the beginning of the year that I started Cairns Little A's, there was a coaching course in Mareeba and so I went up and did that and started my coaching journey. And I just loved it because, you know on sign on days, we had probably 60 of the 83 kids all there on the first day, all looking at us, OK, what do we do now? We will go, whoa, what do we do Shaz? You know, you've done the coaching course. And it was just sort of thrown at me and, you know, but that was probably when I discovered that, "a", I could communicate and "b", the kids listen cause they were so excited about being there. And, you know, so from out of that, it's pretty easy to get some really good results for each of the kids and for the Little Athletic Centre as well. So we became very successful very, very quickly in that we only had a six week season. It was July by the time we got started. And Athletics starts in April up north. So, yeah, that's when I decided I like coaching and I've coached ever since, there hasn't been a period when I haven't coached.
Cam Tradell [00:04:23] And that's, it's amazing. And the power of the volunteers there with, you know, wanting to serve the community. You then made that leap because you've been in, you know, coaching and you've been sort of looking after Athletics or people in Athletics for some time. How did you then sort of make the transition from the early development stages into adults and even performance athletes? How did that all come about?
Sharon Hannan [00:04:47] It was a journey that I guess was happening without me even realising where I was heading. I had some senior athletes that we were doing okay and and I just kept talking to people. And thankfully, there's things called state championships and country championships and national championships and and you just meet and talk to people and ask questions and watch how they're coaching and, you know, listen to what they're saying to their athletes and lots of coaching textbooks. And I was also doing uni back in the day when I first moved to the Gold Coast. And so I had access to the library at Griffith Uni and and I did have, you know, going in and reading up on quantitative analysis from reading up on coaching and techniques and you know, those sort of things, and I learnt sort of fairly rapidly. I learnt alot at my level two course, , which is now classified as a level four accreditation. That was a 10 day course. I learnt so much, not just from the lecturers and facilitators, but from the people doing the course. That was fantastic and I've done a few of those since then and and just coached and just tried to stay a step ahead of the game, no more than, no more than the athletes that were standing in front of me knew.
Cam Tradell [00:06:18] You talk about the strength of the communities around you that support you. How important is it to leverage, you know, other people's experience and to also have mentors to help you with regards to how you develop? Have you found that as being valuable input to creating who you are as a coach?
Sharon Hannan [00:06:36] Oh, undeniably, it's really important. You know, you live in a bubble if you don't seek advice and ask questions and learn from others because so many have gone before. Unfortunately, when I first started, a lot of the printed material that was around was was published in the times of the, you know, the suspected doping in some of the countries, so some of the exercises they were doing in the sessions that they were doing that were published in those books were just outrageous. But, you know, I've never taken a programme from anywhere, but my husband so far has been my greatest mentor. He was level five soon after I moved to the Gold Coast. He was going that was a year long process back then and he was going through that and was awarded his level five in jump and so he's just been fantastic and, you know, I've done a great deal of coach education as well, and he was a teacher, maths and science. People think he was Pys. Ed., but he wasn't he was just heavily involved in athletics. He would sit in the back of the classroom and just write little notes. And then we talk about some of the things that I could do better and some of the mannerisms that I could lose. Or change, you know, I think he's just being a fantastic mentor. Really, really good. And knew so many people already and introduced me to so many people who I might never have been in conversations with.
Cam Tradell [00:08:21] How do you create that safe environment that promotes that open communication between you two to understand one, how you feeling one day or they're feeling one day or their problems or, you know, what they feel they need to work to. How do you create that trust so that you can get that open communication going between the two of you?
Sharon Hannan [00:08:39] Because I think I'm a big believer in nurturing as a valuable coaching tool, and I think that where a lot of females have a bit of an advantage over males, you know, being a parent, you know, you are justy on the lookout for all the little signs that show someone in a bit of distress or they're a little bit sad or you know, they struggle to communicate with others in the group or whatever. So I guess that's one of my big strengths, is is just being able to notice things and then talk to the athletes, not even necessarily about what I know, but but building a belief in you know, the people around them, belief in them, that falling over or tripping or doing something wrong is not a bad thing. That it is a learning step and I don't know, I think not ever having done sport really when I was young thats what I brought to the table, was valuable parenting skills, I guess. I was a single parent for 12 and a half years, so, I had a bit of experience.
Cam Tradell [00:10:08] It's incredible how you bring a life experience to other aspects of your coaching and so on. So that really identifying or having that self awareness around this is a key strength and it's also something that's desirable from an athlete perspective. So being a person, good person, first, coach second, to then create those environments, I think that's a really powerful sort of message.
Sharon Hannan [00:10:31] Yeah, I think so. You know, people will be surprised, really surprised at some of the things that kids talk to us about that they wouldn't talk to their parent about or, you know, the number of times that I've said to say a teenage athlete, who is having some real problems. You know, "I can talk to your mom or dad about this". "Oh, no, no". Well, you know, I'm not going to talk about it direct, but I'm just going to go and have a conversation with them and not go and say, you should be doing this. You should be saying that. Or you shouldn't be, you know, feeding them this or whatever. But I just go in and have a conversation with them about, you know, how the athlete feels or what I think would help the athlete improve. And that might better sleep patterns or better food or, you know, all of those things. So I find it hard sometimes to have conversations with parents, but you've got to try and make an environment where the athlete knows that they can talk to you and that you might be able to help them.
Cam Tradell [00:11:50] It's almost like the sport highlights or puts more attention on the need for good stakeholder management. So the way that you navigate through that, that's it's an incredible skill. And again, I guess it would help build those bonds of trust between yourself and the athlete when they see you're actually trying to help in other areas or other ways. I think that's a fantastic insight.
Sharon Hannan [00:12:55] Yeah, for sure and importantly, it works the other way. The parents will come to me and say, you know, I'm really worried that, you know, Joe Blow isn't doing enough schoolwork. And, you know, my husband and I are at the point where we're going to start excluding them from training because we've tried excluding them from social media, from their devices or whatever and that's not working. So we just wanted to talk to you about that. And I said, go, you know, go for it. But, you know, it's good when there's conversation, you know, when parents feel that they can come and seek some sort of backup or guidance or some help as well.
Cam Tradell [00:13:18] Goal setting is about sensible stretch, but it's also about managing the expectations with how growth is measured. You're saying that most are motivated when they come to you, so therefore they've got their eyes set on something and they just want to achieve it. But setting those realistic expectations is just as important as also building them up with regards to progressions.
Sharon Hannan [00:13:18] Yeah, absolutely. And and a lot of the time they won a race at school or something and they come to you, but you introduce them to, you know, jumps and throws and other events as well because you just never know what body type they're going to end up with? How are they going to, you know, where their strengths are going to be? So you try and give them as much variety as possible. But, you know, on the other hand, I get phone calls from parents of eight year olds every Olympic year and every Commonwealth Games saying, oh, my daughter's the fastest in her grade at the school and she wants to go to the Olympics.
Cam Tradell [00:13:56] I think that multi functional approach is a much more sensible vision to the future for creating physical competence and literacy for young athletes as they develop.
Sharon Hannan [00:14:09] It's very hard to get kids to do field events sport. Because it it's movement that are way out of the ordinary, where, running is just faster walking. In their very basic conversations with themselves and but to get them to, to really think about just going and having a go and learning the skill and starting from the basics, it can be pretty hard because kids still have this real fear of failure.
Cam Tradell [00:14:46] Sharon, there's a lot for us to take away from what you've shared. Thanks very, very much. Thank you for joining me today, if you'd like to find out more about Coaching and Officiating or have any feedback or questions, please email us at Workforce@Sportaus.gov.au. My name is Cam Tradell and I look forward to you joining me for the next podcast in the Coaching and Officiating series.