Evie Collier has been awarded a prestigious place on the inaugural Women’s Coach Internship Programme (WCIP) to be piloted at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonweath Games.  The 23-year old  player currently works as a Learning Mentor at Carlton Le Willows Academy in Nottingham and assists at the Centre for Excellence programme based there, but in March will be heading to Australia to join the coaching team supporting the England squad.

Under the innovative programme, national sports organisations were invited to submit an application for an aspiring female coach to be awarded an internship in their Gold Coast 2018 coaching team.

A central part of the Commonwealth Games Federation’s Gender Equality Strategy, the WCIP will help build women’s coaching capacity across the commonwealth and in turn stand to benefit athletes from all Commonwealth countries and territories.

There were only 19 places on the programme available across all the Commonwealth countries and across all the sports, so to secure one of these places was a great achievement for Evie.

The WCIP will include: travel and accommodation allowance; accreditation to allow the same access as other coaches; professional development; workshops and networking opportunities.

Head of Talent and Performance at Table Tennis England, Simon Mills said;

Table Tennis England are very keen to support the development of future high performance female coaches.  As such, we were extremely happy to apply for this internship on behalf of Evie, who shows all the characteristics and aptitude to become a successful table tennis coach and she has a bright future in performance coaching.   Evie is already working with the new England 9-13 squad and she supported the England Team at the Cadet 6 Nations competition over the summer and is in the final stages of completing her Level 1 coaching award.

Evie is, understandably, very excited about her trip down-under next year saying;

I enjoy playing competitively but I see coaching as my chance to give something back and help the development of younger players.  I am really looking forward to taking part on the programme and would like to thank everyone involved in enabling me to have this opportunity