CPSA Awards Finalists: Coach

Coach of the Year, Sponsored by Browning

This award recognises the contribution of a CPSA-qualified instructor or coach in developing their shooters to make excellent progress and/or achieve great success. If there is an instructor/coach who has contributed to your success then this is the category to nominate them in.

 

Ali Schwind

   

 

Ali has been shooting for 25 years and has a broad background in a variety of shooting disciplines. In 2022 Ali became one of the first women to qualify as a Level 3 senior coach after passing all four qualifications over 4 consecutive years and has since started her training to become a tutor and help others to qualify as instructors. 

As a full time instructor her days can take her across most of East Anglia where she coaches from a selection of grounds. 

She coaches the East region of the Dynamic ladies shooting club where growing numbers of ladies have been introduced to the sport but also encouraged to take their shooting to the highest level.

Alongside her private coaching she volunteers many of her weekends to coach students, as a senior coach at Cambridge University and the head coach at Writtle University.

 

David Dale

   

I started shooting in the early eighties at the age of 10 when my parents took up the sport. In 1999 I was lucky enough to get a job at Bisley shooting ground as an instructor, two years later moving across the road into the newly built National clay shooting centre.

In my 25 years as a shooting instructor, I have worked with a large variety of clients from people picking up a gun for the first time to members of the British team.

Being able teach beginners and coach experienced shooters is equally rewarding and something I have not tired of after all these years.

It very humbling to be nominated by people I have worked with over the years as I get as much out of it as they do. 

 

 

Mhairi-Ann Troup

   

Having instructed for 20 years, I started Dynamic Ladies Shooting Club in 2020, to get more women of all ages and abilities involved in the sport where their numbers were very low. The club is unique because we teach them to shoot, rather than just meet for group shoots. I make sure lessons are fun and engaging, which is the style for which I have become known and has driven the club’s popularity and expansion across the UK. This style of coaching has really helped me engage with the younger generation of female shooters.

Three and a half years on, I have introduced hundreds of women to clay shooting in Sussex alone.

Aside from Dynamic Ladies, it’s important to me to still find time to coach my male clients and I continue to get a real buzz from taking children for their first lessons.

I truly love what I do.

Mike Williams

   

Children, teenagers, adult men, and women, whether a one-to-one lesson or a team event, each gets my undivided attention, it’s my one and overriding passion, I just love to get shooters “smoking” clays.

I have coached a wide spectrum of would-be shooters from the total novice, through club shooters and competition winners to England Team members and international achievers. I continue to do-so daily and get the same satisfaction of helping a shooter achieve whatever they desire as I used to get from competing myself.

Team Leader on the CPSA Clay Line at Game Fairs for several years where, as a coach, “On-the-line”, you must get success very quickly, otherwise you lose their custom.

I am the longest serving member of the CPSA Academy’s Tutor Team (my 30th anniversary this year) and thoroughly enjoy passing on what I have learned (over the years) and teaching our competent shooters how to become new CPSA Instructors and Coaches. I created the Swing-to (not to be confused with Swing-through) Method for dealing with quartering-away targets.

  

Vote for your favourite finalist HERE