Sussex Cricket Foundation & Southern Vipers join forces to upskill club coaches

On Sunday 20th February, the Sussex Cricket Foundation hosted a coaches workshop in partnership with the Southern Vipers in the Aerotron Indoor School at The 1st Central County Ground, Hove.

The Southern Vipers coaches, which included Head Coach, ex England Captain Charlotte Edwards, Senior Regional Talent Manager, Ian Cox, Regional Talent Manager, Beth Morgan and Sussex Women’s Head Coach, Alexia Walker, ran a workshop for club coaches in Sussex that work with Women and Girls players.

The workshop saw 45 coaches from 28 Women & Girls Clubs in attendance, where they learnt about the Sussex Cricket and Southern Vipers pathway and how clubs play a vital part in developing players in the pathway. Charlotte and Ian demonstrated several drills during the afternoon, where the coaches had a go for themselves, so that they could understand the significance of the drills and ask questions, to then be able to take the drills away to use at their club sessions.

Gemma Manvell from Steyning Cricket Club said, “It was such an informative and useful session, I really enjoyed it and came away feeling inspired. The coaching drills were so creative and useable for our level, it felt like we were part of one big team. It is so fantastic to see the future of girls and women’s cricket having such importance and value but such a great leadership team.”

The afternoon gave clubs the opportunity to learn from the expert coaches and give them an opportunity to enhance their coaching knowledge and understand what is being delivered in the professional game. It also provided coaches with the understanding of how it can be used to help develop women and girls’ players at clubs, so that if those players want to go through the pathway, everyone from clubs, Sussex and the Southern Vipers are all working together delivering similar drills.

Ian Cox, Southern Vipers Senior Regional Talent Manager said, “It was brilliant engagement from all the coaches involved, it demonstrates how important Sussex support the development of club coaches to run an event like this and we were delighted to be there and hope everyone found it useful.”

Charlotte Burton, Women & Girls Development Officer added, “Thank you to the Southern Vipers coaches and Alexia for delivering an excellent workshop to our Women and Girls Club coaches. It was fantastic to see so many coaches in attendance and being able to give them this opportunity to learn some new drills and develop their own coaching from the Southern Vipers, will only strengthen Women and Girls cricket in Sussex.”