British Canoeing Paddle Sport Leader Assessment
March 2022 was to conclude with two day's of assessment for Blue Therapy Active founders and co-owners Sarah-Jane Coombes & Del Christie, along with Sarah Taylor, one of our new team support staff. under the watchful eye of Joe Jordan from Canoe Sport Coaching.
The British Canoeing Paddlesport Leader is to support leaders running safe, quality and enjoyable trips based on a groups needs and aspirations. The award requires a higher level of personal skills and safety/rescue skills and to fulfil sound leadership decisions while out coaching on the water.
A Paddlesport Leader has the option to choose the craft from which they work and has the ability to look after others in both single discipline and mixed fleets. Craft can include racing craft, touring kayaks, open canoes, suitable sit on top kayaks, general purpose kayaks, stand up paddle boards, packrafts or crew boats.
The two days spent on the water with Joe and our wonderful volunteers was to prove challenging at times but was so much fun. Joe is an amazing ambassador for BC with an incredible ability to fill you with confidence and motivation.
The preparation and planning ahead of the assessment was invaluable with multiple meetings over Microsoft Teams and back and forth emails between ourselves and Joe with everything we needed including all prerequisites sent ahead of the days.
Ensuring we had all prepared and organised the logistics for the both day's including our back plans B and C etc to ensure then pressure was off and that we could focus on the task at hand, to demonstrate to Joe we could meet the criteria and standards set out by BC.
There is so much that goes into an assessment that others just don't see or appreciate unless having already been down the same path. The candidates that participated in our assessment had some insight into this by way of a Whatsapp group we had created specifically to share and engage with them in the lead up.
Needless to say we were all successful and passed ;-) and would like to express our sincere thank you's to everyone involved with a very special thanks to Joe. A truly amazing experience shared with everyone, with so many take aways to continually develop ourselves in world of paddlesports.
If you are thinking of venturing into the world of coaching and leadership our advice would be go for it. It is rewarding and totally worth every moment you allocate to developing yourself and to helping others develop too. Joe is amazing and provides everything from training to assessment, get in touch with us and we can help advise you on how to do it.