Women In Sport Coaching Conference Resources

Amber Barrett
Malahide Grand Hotel

Saturday December 3rd

We are delighted to welcome you to the inaugural Sport Ireland Women In Sport Coaching Conference.

Sport Ireland is delighted you have registered to attend the Women in Sport Coaching Conference this Saturday 3rd December from 9:45am -16.15pm. This is a packed schedule so registration will be open from 8:45am and the event will start at 9:45am sharp in the Grand Hotel Malahide, Dublin.  The conference invites female coaches, and male coaches of female athletes/teams, from teenage to adult level to join us for a day of presentations, panel discussions and breakout sessions. Those in attendance can expect to hear from Irish and International keynote speakers, coaches and coaching professionals who will share their knowledge and tips to unlocking potential and creating environments where their athletes flourish. Talks/workshops on the day include:

  • Creating environments for athletes to flourish
  • Coaching teenage girls
  • Nutrition and menstrual cycle and the female athlete
  • Creating psychological safety in your training group
  • Creating the right culture
  • Coaching high-performance athletes
  • Plus more

Women in Sport Coaching Conference Agenda

Keynote speakers

Gail Donohue

Gail Donohue - Optimizing the Environment for Your Athletes and Coaches

Gail Donohue is a former national-level swimmer, and Olympic coach in Artistic Swimming. With her extensive personal experience in high-level sport, a BSc in Kinesiology, she is a recognized authority on her sport, leadership, and coaching. She has made numerous presentations on coaching and leadership to audiences around the world.

Gail is a Master Coach Developer and Coach Evaluator for the Coaching Association of Canada (CAC) and is a passionate advocate for strengthening female coaching leadership. Gail has held the positions of Vice Chair on the boards of the Coaching Association of Canada and Canada Artistic Swimming and on the former boards of Coaches of Canada and the Coaching Association of BC.

Jo Hopkins

Jo Hopkins - Mentoring for Coaches with Jo Hopkins

A former International athlete and coach, a trained counsellor, teacher, consultant and adjunct of Hult Ashridge Executive Education, Jo uses the principles of neuroscience, psychology and sociology to underpin her thinking and practice in organisational and human behaviour. Her roles such as Performance Mentor for Team GB Performance Services Team, (Rio 2016) have honed her skills and processes working with world class performers and Senior Leadership teams who are required to deliver under extreme pressure. 

Breakout Rooms

Neill Delahaye

Neill Delahaye - Coaching High Performance athletes

Neill Delahaye, nominee for 2021 RTÉ Manager of the Year award, has been promoted to the newly created role of Cycling Ireland Head Coach. After nine years leading Cycling Ireland’s successful paracycling programme, Delahaye will vacate the paracycling coach role to take on a broader remit covering all disciplines. Irelands paracycling programme is independently recognised was Ireland’s most successful high-performance programme at both the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Panel discussion & Q&A - Coaches and Cliona Foley

Greg McWilliams

Greg McWilliams

The Irish Women’s Rugby Head Coach has coached globally for the last 26 years, including the USA Men’s National side, Leinster, Ireland, New York, St Michaels College and the storied Barbarians but his biggest environment learnings came at Yale University, where he was the Director of Rugby for 7 years and is still active on their board. As a former teacher, who studied at UCD and Trinity College, Greg is passionate about creating effective learning environments and has discovered external factors that have helped to guide his coaching tenants.