Snow Australia Coach Academy strengthening the next generation

The Snow Australia Coach Academy is a pioneering coach-development program designed to match Snow Australia’s ‘world’s best’ vision for our athletes with a coach development pathway to support Australian winter sport coaches to grow, develop and fulfill their greatest potential as coaches.

The 2025 Coach Academy cohort includes 45 coaches across all of the snow sport disciplines.

Led by the program’s lead facilitator Chip Richards, a core group of 25 coaches came together last week in Jindabyne for the May Live Lab.

The coaches gathered for a 2-day immersive camp to focus on their individual and collective development as a group, while building new skills to expand their approach with athletes.

One of the exciting aspects of this year’s live lab was the sharing and integration of the Snow Australia Coach Development Framework, which has been developed over the past 12 months as a collaborative project with core members of Snow Australia, the OWIA and AIS.

The Coach Development Framework is a snow-specific performance pathway guide to help identify, assess and map the progression of snow sport coaches to grow in skill and approach from entry-level and early development, up through the performance pathway in high-performance.

In the May Live Lab, coaches had the opportunity to explore the overall framework and then dive into their own personal approach and capabilities to identify core strengths and opportunities for development in the coming 12 months.

Another powerful feature of this year’s Live Lab, was the opportunity to run the program in partnership with the Emerging Talent Program (ETP) Season Launch Camp for athletes, giving Coach Academy coaches an opportunity to explore key coaching skills during the Live Lab that could then be directly applied to their work with athletes in the days immediately following.

“Amidst the different activities we focus on throughout the year with our developing coaches, the Live Lab is a great reminder of the unreplaceable power of coming together in person,” Chip Richards said.  

“Taking time to unpack key lessons learned, share concepts, stories and experiences across the different disciplines and levels of the coach pathway is a super potent process.  

“The opportunity to weave this work in with the ETP Season Launch Camp this year was a real gift for all involved.”