To date, nearly 350 people have been selected for the programme and started their journey to deliver great coaching experiences.
Recruitment has now begun for a fourth cohort of coaches, who will embark on the free 12-month education and training package aimed at Londoners aged 16-30.
This summer, the first group of coaches to complete the LCP were celebrated at an event at London City Hall that included guest speeches from the likes of England and GB 3x3 Head Coach Julius Joseph, EuroCup winner Shanice Beckford-Norton and BE’s London Regional Chair, Patricia Fairclough OBE.
Stories from the first batch of LCP graduates, included tales of stepping out of comfort zones and embarking on a life-changing experience that, for some, included travelling to NBA coaching clinics in Europe.
Stratford-based George Vaz Rocha was one such coach who enjoyed every minute of the programme.
Originally, working in IT, the Brazilian-British national transitioned into coaching basketball and saw the LCP as a way to further hone his skills and help the players in his charge maximise their potential.
He called the overall experience ‘priceless’.
"Coaching can be quite a lonely endeavour. So having the support group, having a group of people that you can rely on and could go to when I needed some advice or perspective on what was happening was really important,” said the 29-year-old, who is now the head coach of MVP Academy in Portugal.
"Obviously, having mentors that have years and years of experience to lean on [in regard to] how I should feel or how things should be done and what my expectations of situations should be was a really big deal for me.”
LDN Phoenix Basketball Club coach Lucy Martinez-Sabri was one of the LCP coaches lucky enough to be invited to an NBA Basketball Without Borders coaching clinic in Malaga, Spain, where she was assigned a mentor and shadowed their coaching style, whilst meeting people from all over the world.
“To have the opportunity to go to an event with such high calibre coaches, working with not just NBA coaches, but ex-WNBA players as well and just seeing the level of youth players out there, I was absorbing as much as I could,” said Martinez-Sabri.
“Although we were there to just get experience, I felt like a coach, I got respect there and was privy to the conversations and plans for the sessions the experienced coaches were going to be delivering. I felt part of a global coaching community.”
But coaching is just one of the ways people are experiencing growth and leadership on the LCP.
The programme has a commitment to mentoring the grassroots coaches from start to finish and its mentoring scheme develops valuable coach-to-coach relationships.
One of those coach mentors is England's Commonwealth Games 3x3 gold medal winning coach, GB Men’s 3x3 Head Coach and CEO of Ball Out, Julius Joseph – known as ‘sensei’ by his players for his mastery of the short format version of the game.
He says that being a mentor is just about supporting and guiding young coaches through their journey.
Practically, it’s a lot of WhatsApp messages, emails and sometimes a phone call, as coaches just want his perspective and an understanding of his coaching philosophy so they can build theirs.
“Everybody's philosophy will be a little bit different based on their life experience and how they feel is the best way to do things. Obviously, by sharing my experiences as a national team coach for England and GB, and as a coach of young people, is basically getting them to understand that there are different ways of being a successful coach,” said Joseph, who won a bronze medal as a player for England at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
“It's about investing and putting the time in to understand what coaching is about, understand what drills work through trial and error and know it's okay to make mistakes along the way and just learn.
“It's really rewarding to see the journeys of these coaches, and then the impact that they can have on the lives of young people [in London]. I know what basketball's done for me in terms of helping me with certain life skills, and it's great that I can give people that opportunity to change other people's lives as well.”
Want to be a coach mentor for the Program? Please contact [email protected] for more information.
.
.
