By: Rebecca Cheverton

If you head to the pool at the University of British Columbia Aquatic Centre, you’ll find on deck Sierra Moores, a young and aspiring varsity assistant coach who is about to get even busier.

The third-year assistant coach with the UBC Thunderbirds is already working on her NCCP Senior Coach program and a Master of Science in Kinesiology. She will soon add Commonwealth Sport Canada’s Women Coach Internship program to her schedule after being selected along with coaches from five other sports.

The program’s aim is to address the issue of female coaches being underrepresented in high performance sport in Canada. Moores, along with the other selected coaches, will have the opportunity to be mentored through leadership development sessions and the ability to gain experience at a national or international event.

Tina Hoeben, the Swimming Canada Coach for the Commonwealth Women Internship Program for the 2018 Commonwealth Games and 2020-2021 WCIP Mentor, will again act as mentor for this year’s program.

Moores said she fell into coaching. Having been a swimmer herself, she also taught swimming lessons and coached club teams for many years while going to school. Getting the job at UBC was a “right place, right time” moment when another coach left the program.

Head Coach “Derrick [Schoof] had I think known me for two weeks at that point and was like ‘You seem great, do you want to be a part-time assistant?’” said Moores, who was previously the varsity assistant coach at the University of Waterloo. “He and I got along really well, we had a lot of fun together and were really aligned in our coaching philosophy. I guess he saw a lot of potential in me.”

Moores wants to continue to learn and develop her coaching skills to further support her athletes and continue to develop the program. She explained it was a great way to get high performance experience while still being early in her career. While she enjoys her work with the varsity team, she aspires to be able to coach an athlete to an international team someday.

“Tina spoke very highly of her experience in the program and I know it did a lot of really good things for her club (KISU Swim Club in Penticton, B.C.) after she was a member and now back as a mentor so it just seemed like a great opportunity,” said Moores. “I didn’t expect to get it to be very honest. I was pleasantly surprised.”

The thing Moores is most excited for is to get to know and learn from coaches who have had success in their sport.

“I think the biggest [goal] would be the opportunity to get to know, to network and to rub elbows with people who are doing full time what I hope to do someday and to learn from them and get to know them on more of a personal level,” said Moores.

Hoeben said both her experience with the Commonwealth Women Internship Program in 2018 and as 2020-2021 WCIP Mentor to coach Zoe Miles had huge learning curves for her.

“Mentoring someone puts you in a different set of shoes and there’s lots of learning that happens there as well as just learning great things from Zoe herself, so I’m looking forward to building my relationship with Sierra and having that kind of experience,” said Hoeben.

Hoeben feels being a mentor to these female coaches is incredibly important as she did not have a female role model when she was working her way through her career.

“In the last few years I’ve had a number of fast swimmers that have taken me to higher levels and it took me a really long time to get to that place. One of the things that I never had that I really wish I did was a female mentor or a female role model or just a coach I could see that was at that higher level,” said Hoeben. “It’s been really important for me to play a role and give back to the sport and to female coaches in the sport.”

Hoeben hopes the main thing Moores will take away from the program is how to become a better leader and to gain confidence in her role as a coach.

“The program is multi-sport so it doesn’t focus on swimming technique or training technique for swimming but what it does focus on is the softer side of coaching skills and leadership so that is the one thing I hope she takes away.”