Congratulations to the following coaches who have been appointed as head coaches of our Cockburn Cougars WABL program for 2022/23. A number of our coaches from 2022 will once again take on a coaching role in 2023 showing continued stability here at Cockburn. We are incredibly privileged as a club to continue enhancing our coaching depth to be one of the deepest across the state.

Our two BWA coaches of the year Tyrone Thwaites (U18 girls) and Jess Van Schie (U14 boys) will return to lead their respective age groups, joined by returning lead coaches Andy Stewart (U18 boys / U12 girls), Mark Clayden (U16 boys), Adrian Sgro (U12 boys), Russell Hann (U16 girls) and Nicole Moyle (U14 girls).

We also welcome some first-time coaches with an enormous amount of prior basketball knowledge not only within the Cougar program but from programs both here in Australia and overseas. We are excited to welcome Cougar playing life-member and former SBL/NBL1 captain Vanessa Cahill back to head-coaching, responsible for our U14/3 boys.

In addition, some of our NBL1 athletes & coaches continue to give back to our Cougar community, with Noah Stewart (U12/2 boys), Jessie Edwards (U12/3 girls), Carlin Hughes (U16/2 boys), Darren Smith (U18/2 boys), Peta Small (U12/2 girls) and Quintien Calder (U20 men) all taking up head coach positions.

Pleasingly, we continue to lift the number of female head coaches in our WABL program, moving to approximately 30% in 2023.

As a progression of these appointments we plan to run a number of coaching courses and development nights across 2023 to continue to upskill our coaching group both in the WABL and the domestic coaching space.

We are currently finalising our assistant coaching positions over the coming week with State Championship Trials beginning in the last week of October.

For more information, please head to https://cougarfamily.com.