Title:  Stories of Resilience and Courage: Women Coaches from a Global Community

Author: Sheila Hurtig Robertson

Genre: Non-fiction / Sports

 

Twenty women coaches from different backgrounds met at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia. The meeting was the first gathering of the Women Coach Internship Programme (“WCIP”), the brainchild of Bruce Robertson, Vice-President of the Commonwealth Games Federation and the author’s husband.

The primary goal of the WCIP is to provide female coaches with development, mentoring, and learning opportunities together with a supportive network. The twenty women, chosen for the WCIP by their respective Commonwealth Games Associations, formed an immediate bond, and in her fascinating book, Hurtig Robertson unfolds their stories.

Canadian Hurtig Robertson has been a sports writer and editor for over three decades and her experience clearly shows in this well-constructed and neatly-edited book. Simply laid out, and straightforwardly written, she has produced a focused, precise, and absorbing collection of written portraits.

Each chapter follows a similar framework, detailing the women’s sporting and coaching trajectories, their personal stories, and the effect that Covid-19 had on their training.

Understandably, there is a journalistic style to her writing and she retains a level of objectivity to her subjects. She ensures that their voices are heard, paraphrasing salient details and letting the women provide thought and reflection on their experiences.

This gives the reader a genuine feel for each woman’s personality and their strikingly diverse environments and cultures. Although there are similarities in the women’s career pathways to WCIP selection, the majority of their stories are remarkably different and make for captivating reading.

Indeed, Stories of Resilience and Courage cleverly operates on several levels, ensuring that readers without sporting or coaching interest will find this book of great appeal and application. Each biographical vignette delivers exactly what the first part of the title promises. Primarily these are stories of resilience and courage in the face of some overwhelming odds.

All of the women have endured challenges and hardship, including gender prejudice in varying degrees while pursuing their sporting goals. Many have also suffered personal tragedy and adversity.

Hurtig Robertson gives an overview of the women’s childhood and family background together with how sport came to prominence in their lives.

She also builds geographical context for each woman, providing a concise but engaging outline of the customs, history, and daily existence of the various corners of the Commonwealth that the women originate from and, in many cases, still reside.

It’s supremely interesting, gently educational, and lends her subjects a clear sense of identity as Hurtig Robertson discusses their lives in Mauritius, Malaysia, Mozambique, and Uganda, among other countries. The number of obstacles that female coaches still face in many of the Commonwealth territories is eye-opening and disappointing.

There are mixed coaching disciplines among the women, from table tennis to boxing, wrestling, and swimming. All of these require quite different physical and mental strengths. Hence, although sports coaching is the women’s commonality, their motivations and ambitions are fundamentally individual and Hurtig Robertson is keen to emphasize the distinctions.

Occasionally, the prose could use a bit more life, and a couple of chapters feel a little too formulaic and scholarly in tone. But essentially, this book has its roots in academia, and Hurtig Robertson’s attention to detail, in respect to her footnotes for source papers, is excellent, as is her complementary use of maps and photographs for each woman and the comprehensive Appendices.

Stories of Resilience and Courage: Women Coaches from a Global Community is a deeply inspiring, encouraging, and thought-provoking compilation of extraordinary stories from remarkable women. Hurtig Robertson has produced an immensely readable and accessible book that deserves a wide audience.

 

 

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