PARTICIPANTS at local, football focused, not-for-profit community association Rise have progressed to become this year’s coaches.

Last year, Habib Noorani was under intensive training from head coach Phil McMullen and the Rise coaching staff which resulted in a semi-professional football contract with Lake Macquarie based National Premier League club Valentine Phoenix FC.

Following an MCL injury, Habib has been on the sidelines for a few weeks but is still giving back to the community by sharing the knowledge he’s accumulated at Rise, Valentine FC and Coffs United.

Rise head coach Phil McMullen explained how the Rise coaches are taking a more passive approach at Monday training to give the new coaches room to shine.

“We are now in our second year at Rise Coffs Harbour and are setting ourselves up to become sustainable.

“The experienced participants are at a stage where they can share their knowledge with the younger participants.

“Giving them space to shine helps their own personal development as they are acquiring teaching, mentoring skills and communication skills, in addition they are gaining practical skills like how to structure a training session.

“Last year the staff were a lot more hands-on but this year we are taking a more mentoring, facilitating approach and asking our newly accredited coaches to train our juniors.

“Many juniors have the dream of being a footballer, we encourage them to chase their dreams but also to facilitate personal development at the same time, not everyone can be a footballer so learning new skills is important,” said Phil.

“Helping Habib Noorani on a Monday evening are many participants invested in the Rise program including Cohen Gorza-Jones, Hameed Edo, Tahseen Edo, Azad Qasim, Enas Qasim, Payton Lawler, Abbey Lawler, Nada Ali, Roger Lundindi, Melad Khalaf and Hadiya Aldakhi.

“All have excelled at inspiring other Junior RISE participants.

“Each coach has an amazing energy which resonates with the younger participants, they’ve built up a rapport with the junior players who look up to them as role models which is great to see,” said Phil.

 

By David Wigley