“It’s lovely seeing the wins at big events, but winning is the icing on the cake,” he said.
Meacheam’s journey to coaching success began on a farm in Takapau, Central Hawke’s Bay.
“I was quite a bit younger than both of my siblings, so I wasn’t really cool enough to hang out with them and play soccer and rugby and things like that, so I spent a lot of time meandering around the farm.
“I would end up tramping up through the foothills, trying to get a little bit higher every day. Without knowing it, I was building a pretty good base of endurance.”
Excelling in cross-country, he eventually became an elite-level middle-long distance runner.
But he couldn’t help himself when it came to helping others.
“Even when I was younger, I was giving people advice whether it was solicited, or unsolicited.”
After the end of his running career, one of his first coaching jobs was teaching children’s athletics.
“Which is not what I wanted to do, but it ended up being a great basis for coaching.”
Soon after came the opportunity to coach one of his first para-athletes, Dannevirke discus thrower Ashley Exeter.
‘She was awesome. She was quite bloody good,” he said.
It was a massively rewarding leap for Meacheam, who said it changed his overall perception of coaching.
“Right away. I always thought coaching was about ‘here’s what I know let’s do that’, when really what coaching para-athletes has taught me is ‘let’s figure this out together’.”
Now with an incredible 10-year track record in coaching para-athletes, he’s also putting his weight behind a new initiative that looks to help budding coaches as they work in inclusive sport.
“I made heaps of mistakes along the way, because you can’t know what you don’t know,” Meacheam said.
LevelUp is a free initiative from ACC and Paralympics New Zealand with resources that have been designed by coaches to help promote positive para-coaching.
It covers topics such as “What is Para sport?”, terminology, classification and coaching considerations for a wide range of impairments – from limb deficiencies to intellectual impairment.
Meacheam is the community manager at Athletics New Zealand, and through his work is trying to get every athletics coach in the country to be open to the idea of coaching a para-athlete.
“It is an important piece of that puzzle,” Meacheam said.
“We don’t want 20 new para-coaches, we want 200 new para-coaches. The fact that the course is online and you can access it in your own time, from your own home, is really fantastic.”
Being widely accessible also means the toolkit can allow regional clubs like those in Hawke’s Bay to have the opportunity to foster and grow talent.
Disability Sport & Recreation Hawke’s Bay says there are about a dozenmembers doing disability sport in Hawke’s Bay.
“I think Hawke’s Bay is one of our great sporting regions. We’ve done really well in terms of producing lots of Olympians.
“I think there’s a lot of potential Paralympians floating around the region. We just need to find them.”
Mitchell Hageman joined Hawke’s Bay Today in late January. From his Napier base, he writes regularly on social issues, arts and culture, and the community. He has a particular love for stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
