Lawrence paving a path for female coaches
Natalie Lawrence hopes her groundbreaking appointment as Team Wellington National Youth League coach will encourage more clubs to not see gender when selecting coaches.
Lawrence will become the first female to coach a male NYL team when she takes charge of the franchise’s youngsters this summer.
She said the move was important to show other female coaches there was a pathway in coaching outside of the women’s game.
‘‘It’s significant in the fact that is shows all females that it’s football, no matter what gender.
‘‘You can challenge yourself in whatever environment you want to and it shows how progressive New Zealand is as well, and I’m really proud to be part of that.’’
Lawrence will arrive in Wellington
from Canada where she has been head coach of the Vancouver Whitecaps’ girls’ academy programme for the last three years.
Before that, she worked at Capital Football in Wellington as a federation development officer and in 2014 was Capital’s National Women’s League coach.
Team Wellington made the appointment as part of a joint
venture with Capital Football to run their youth team.
Lawrence, who originally hails from England, said there were more opportunities and pathways opening up for female coaches, although there was still a lot of work to do.
‘‘I think in the world in general there is still a bit of a way to go.
‘‘There are more opportunities purely in the amount people have invested not only in women’s football, but also women coaches,
administrators and everything.’’
She pointed to the balance of staff at Capital Football as a good approach to take to ensure a diverse range of voices are heard.
‘‘At Capital Football, there are more females now than males in the environment and having a mixture, nearly 50-50 is good. You don’t want to go too far one way or the other.
‘‘There is more emphasis on women’s football now, all over the world, and it’s backed more. Through social media and success stories, it seems like more of an exciting, tangible pathway for females to head into.’’
Lawrence’s pathway was aided by her time at Vancouver, where she spent five days a week working on the grass with players.
Joining her on the coaching staff at the girls’ academy were former Football Fern Emma Humphries and New Zealand agegroup
representative Maia Vink.
‘‘I left [New Zealand] to further what I was doing within my coaching. Now, I’m able to come back and I think that shows kind of how the doors open. Sometimes you do have to go somewhere to develop yourself in other areas.’’
Lawrence was always being drawn back to New Zealand, where she completed her A-Licence earlier this year.
It was a phone call to Capital Football chief executive Richard Reid which helped land her the job.
‘‘It came about a little bit by chance. I spoke to Richard and said if I looked at coming back do you know of any jobs that might be available. Richard being Richard went from zero to 1000 and here I am.’’
Lawrence will arrive back in New Zealand on September 16, with trials for the team taking place the next day.