Paying tribute to those coaching our Para Athletes, for this week’s blog we are delighted to have caught up with our newly crowned Scottish Women in Sport Coach of the Year, Sheila Swan.
Sheila, 44, is the Paralympic Head Coach at British Curling.
Wheelchair curling is probably one of the few sports that is truly a wheelchair sport, with the majority of athletes full-time wheelchair users with varying ability. Athletes range from Jo Butterfield, who recently transferred from athletics and whose injury affects all four limbs, to other athletes with conditions like spina bifida, who may be able to walk very small distances but are still wheelchair users the majority of the time.
It is a relatively new sport, with the first World Championships not taking place until 2002, before it became a Paralympic sport in 2006. Since then, classification has evolved from fairly wide to more narrow, but it doesn’t discriminate too much if you have a high or low range of ability.
The squad are currently working towards qualifying for the Milan 2026 Games and train 3 days per week at the National Curling Academy in Stirling, three weeks out of four. Sheila believes balance is really important for the athletes. It can be challenging to travel as suitable accommodation options can be limited, and they need time at home in their own environment to be able to rest and recover well. They are also typically older than the Olympic pathway athletes, often with families and specialised homes which makes relocation more difficult.
Speaking of her role, Sheila said: “I love the sport and I think I’m really fortunate to have the role that I do. In other countries there is not the same support for Paralympic sport as there is here so l feel really lucky to have a full-time coaching role in wheelchair curling.”
Sheila has always had a love for sport, but growing up in rural Perthshire suitable facilities or opportunities to participate were scarce. Taking advantage of what was available, her first love was football.
However, as a girl, there was limited opportunity to continue this beyond primary school, so when she started secondary school, she took up other sports, predominantly hockey and curling. She played both for as long as she was able, but it was challenging with them being played over the same season. Showing real promise in the sport, she dedicated herself to curling and went on to represent Scotland internationally, including taking the World Championship title in 2002.
Coaching was a bit of a calling for Sheila. She had aspirations of becoming a P.E. teacher when she
left school, but wasn’t accepted onto the course. Determined to still do something in sport, she instead enrolled onto the Leisure and Recreation Management programme at the Scottish Agricultural College. On graduating, a Development Officer (DO) role came up at Scottish Curling and it was a perfect fit. As part of this role, she was expected to sit on one of the committees and was allocated the Scottish Wheelchair Curling Association Committee, so has been involved in that strand of the sport from a really early stage, with it only being introduced into Scotland in the early 2000s.
I asked her what attracted her to coaching: “From a very early age I was really appreciative of everyone who gave their time and energy to support me. I’ve been fortunate to have been coached by a lot of strong women, and I’m a firm believer in giving back to your sport.”
She had dabbled in coaching from a young age, but this really stepped up when her DO position allowed her to coach regional squads as part of her role. It was a hands-on approach, where she coached everything from school curling and adult beginners to regional academies. She did this while still competing herself at the time, so it was a bit of a balancing act, with so much of her life consumed by the sport.
We spoke about the differences between wheelchair and traditional curling, and Sheila explained that while there is no sweeping in wheelchair curling, the principles are ultimately the same. She talks of ‘straight, weight and turn’; throwing the stone on the right line, with the correct weight and rotation. However, it is also a very different, and potentially more difficult, challenge to traditional curling. You can’t rely on sweepers to influence the path of the stone, and the delivery time is also a lot quicker. With sliding out on the ice, you have a few seconds to correct yourself. In wheelchair curling, you probably have less than a second.
Sheila believes her primary role as a coach is to bring the best out of people and help them reach their full potential. However, she is also really passionate about ‘future-proofing’ the athletes:
“One of my main goals is that anyone who is leaving the programme, through retirement or any other route, leaves in a better place than they came to the programme in, and that both their health and their mental wellbeing is looked after.”
While Sheila works primarily in elite sport, she is passionate about getting more people involved at a grassroots level. Recreationally, classification is not so strict and it is a case of the more, the merrier.
They know they need to find ways to sell the sport better. It often has a similar image to curling,mwhere it can be deemed, boring, slow, or for farmers… But that’s not the case and they need to bust some myths and grow the pool of people taking part.
Speaking of her nomination for Scottish Women in Sport’s Coach of the Year Award, Sheila said:
“It’s always nice to be recognised for what you do, in any role in your life, but there’s so much more than just me in this team. It’s a real team effort and I have great people around me at British Curling plus support from sportscotland and the UK Sports Institute and many, many more,
“We expanded our coaching team in the summer with some new apprentices and we also have a new pathway programme manager to help grow the sport further. It’s a really exciting time to be involved.”
Speaking prior to being revealed as the award winner, she said: “It’s an honour to be nominated and whichever of us wins I think we’ll be celebrating the team around us and the athletes that we work with, as without them we wouldn’t have a job or be able to do what we do.”
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