The Mountain Training Coaching Award Scheme gains further momentum

Following the successes of pilot course delivery, Mountain Training have passed another crucial milestone in the development of the Coaching Award Scheme.

The Coaching Management Working Group set out to select 19 providers to meet the predicted demand across Britain. 45 high quality applications were received by Mountain Training UK by the deadline of 9th September.

The process of selection has involved the Coaching Management Group's Screening Committee, an impressive team of nine people from the technical staff of the training boards, to representatives from each home nation. The Coaching Management Working Group has selected the providers who will now attend an induction course on 26th September in order to gain approval to deliver the Coaching Award Scheme from the 1st October onwards.

The competition was fierce, and the standard of applications was incredibly high for this first round of providers. Looking ahead, the great news is that there is another list of equally talented coaches and well respected climbers lined up to get involved in the delivery of the scheme in the future – as soon as the demand grows.

The induction will be hosted by Jon Garside of the BMC, Belinda Fear of the Mountain Training Association, and Martin Chester (Coaching Development Officer) who says:

“I can’t wait to get all this talent together in one room. After such a lot of work over a long period, by so many people, it is great to finally be able to hand the scheme to such a talented bunch to roll it out across the country. Each one of them brings some extraordinary specialist skills and a wealth of expertise. It is now important that we get together to agree the plan to deliver a consistent and high quality product, on behalf of Mountain Training UK.”

The induction event will take place on Thursday 26th and Friday 27th September at the Manchester Climbing Centre. On the Thursday evening, there will be an open forum for the climbing media to join the event. This will be a great opportunity to present the scheme, for journalists to meet the coaches, and take some photos and interviews with this impressive team. Once the induction is complete, the Coaching Award Scheme will go live for registrations from October 1st.

The team of providers should be delivering courses in your region, throughout the autumn and into the winter, at both Foundation and Development Coach level. See the details on the pages of the Mountain Training website to find out how you can get involved in this exciting new award scheme.