MEGAN Bishop has been a swimmer and is now one of Altrincham Swimming Club’s coaches.

Megan has just completed a year’s participation on the prestigious National Young Coaches Academy.

The academy programme is delivered by the Youth Sport Trust and funded by Sport England and involves a 12 month programme of mentoring and support development in partnership with the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA).

Megan applied for the programme as she wanted to act as an ambassador for coaching and inspire young swimmers.

Competition to join the programme is fierce and Megan was selected as one of only 20 coaches identified by the ASA as being promising young coaches with the potential to be the most talented in the sport.

Megan was selected for, amongst other things, her communication and organisation skills, being compassionate and open, demonstrating leadership skill, having the ability to inspire young people and being motivated to pass her knowledge to others.

The programme started with Megan attending the Youth Sports Trust National Young Coaches Academy at Loughborough University in January last year along with aspiring performance coaches from swimming and 9 other National Governing Bodies for other sports. This was followed by a 12-month development programme with the ASA with the opportunity to attend England Talent Programmes including development camps and Regional Beacon Programme training and activities and a coach development session at the British Championships.

The programme enabled Megan to meet people such as Jo Jackson - Olympic swimmer, Fred Furniss - England talent development officer, Neil Booth - British swimming official and the head coach from Millfield.

Megan was supported throughout the programme by Altrincham's head coach Wendy McNeil, with mentor training from James Stannard, head coach at Swim Trafford.