Two Hawke's Bay coaches, Craig Philpott and Greg Nicol, are among the latest intake of eight to take on High Performance Sport New Zealand's highly acclaimed Coach Accelerator Programme.
Magpies head coach Philpott, who was the assistant coach of the New Zealand Barbarians team which beat the Maori All Blacksthis year and is also an assistant coach of the Baby Blacks, and Central Hockey High Performance coach Nicol, who is a former Black Sticks men's and women's assistant coach, will join Breakers basketball team head coach Dean Vickerman, Northern Mystics ANZ netball team coach Debbie Fuller, Waikato Regional Performance Centre for Rowing New Zealand assistant coach Dan Kelly, High Performance Athletics coach Debbie Strange, Snowsports New Zealand snowboard coach Sean Thompson and Netball New Zealand High Performance coach Helene Wilson on the three-year professional development programme.
Greg Nicol
This is the eighth intake of coaches into the programme and prominent coaches who have graduated include World Cup-winning All Blacks head coach Steve Hansen, newly appointed Silver Ferns netball team coach Janine Southby and Black Caps cricket team coach Mike Hesson.
"It's a really tough process selecting each intake of coaches because the calibre of applicants is so high and we're delighted with this latest batch," HPSNZ chief executive Alex Baumann said. "Coach Accelerator aims to increase New Zealand's pool of world-class coaches and we're certainly doing this when you look at who has been through the programme."
