Coach's passion for squash brings national recognition

Jared GravattJared Gravatt can be considered a lucky guy.
He's well on the way to making a living out of coaching the sport he loves and has just received national recognition as one of the country's best club coaches.
Gravatt won Squash New Zealand's Club and School Coach of the Year award for 2010 and he said that receiving the award probably hinged a lot on the work he had done setting up the Squash in Schools programme in Northland this year.
"We go into schools and take eight kids along to their local squash club and introduce them to squash: the rules, the ethics and how to enjoy the game and that has been pretty successful and we're hoping to expand it a bit more next year," he said.
The award has come at a great time for the 21-year-old coach as he tries to forge a career in coaching squash. Gravatt was until recently employed by the Whangarei Squash Club as its manager but decided last month to give full-time coaching a shot.
"I recently decided to have a go at being a full-time coach, so the award has come along at a pretty good time really," he said.
"It was a massive surprise to be honest, I didn't know I'd even been nominated but the award is certainly appreciated," he said.
He has coached groups and done individual coaching at the Whangarei Club, as well as assisting with the junior programmes at Mid Western, Maungaturoto and the Kaiwaka Clubs. He has also coached secondary school teams before they attended national competitions.
"I mainly coach juniors, I do a bit of coaching for some of the clubs around the area but I coach seniors as well at club level and I'm looking to expand and develop my skill level and maybe branch out into coaching more seniors," he said.
What has now become a full-time job began by doing a grade one introduction to coaching course while still at school.
"I enjoy squash so much that coaching just became a natural progression for me. You play squash so you might as well coach and spread the word around - so to speak," he said.
He never thought he would ever gain more than a couple of hours' work and treated coaching as a hobby, but the strength of the sport in Northland can't be underestimated.
"I think the players are taking the game a bit more seriously than they used to, they are playing more tournaments than they used to and are a bit more active socially as well within the wider squash community," he said.
Originally from Waipu, Gravatt was a Northland age group representative, which gave him access to some good coaches, which later helped him to progress as a coach.
"I've never been too shy to go and watch a top coach at work and "borrow" a few of their ideas to use in my own coaching," he said.
"Whenever I see someone I coach enjoying themselves at a tournament they're playing at, then you feel pretty good, there are a lot of kids I've coached who were absolute beginners and now they play every tournament and are hooked [by squash] for life, so that feels like a pretty big achievement."