The Coach for Life Foundation was established by Jon Tanner, a former Black Stick and successful businessman. Through his generous philanthropic gifting, Jon has dedicated significant sums to Sport and the Community, all driven by a desire to give back and a powerful belief in the value of sport to transform lives.

Based on his concern, that too many of our Rangatahi are dropping out of sport and a belief that poor sporting experiences were the reason Jon decided to do something about it via his foundation.

The purpose of the Coach for Life Foundation is to reframe the value of coaching in our communities to help grow the quality of youth sport coaches in NZ, so that all our young athletes have the opportunity to enjoy enriching sporting experiences playing and being involved in sport. For Life.

Our first programme of work, was the creation of a documentary - The Players Coach - a documentary that celebrates Shane McLeod’s coaching journey. Shane is a former Black Stick player and coach, who trained as a teacher, before taking an underperforming and dysfunction Belgium Men’s Hockey team to Olympic Silver in Rio and Gold in Tokyo. 

You can view it here - https://youtu.be/KSZ44t3GjVU

While this documentary celebrates Shane's inspiring coaching success on the world stage, his story captures the experiences, mentors and life lessons learned from a young age that helped shape his athlete-centred coaching philosophy.

Shane’s coaching approach is one that aligns to both Sport NZ’s Balance is Better  and School Sport NZ’s approach to youth sport.

In partnership with the Coach for Life Foundation, we have put together a workbook that you and your sports coaches can work through to review and/or develop your coaching philosophy. We encourage you to watch the video and then workshop the workbook.

You can access the workbook here

We are keen to see your schools coaching philosophy. As an incentive , we will offer ten one-hour one-on-ones with Shane McLeod to the schools with the best one-page coaching philosophies.

Article added: Tuesday 14 February 2023