England WU16s coach Estelle Handy: I am actually motivated by what I don’t see

My name is Estelle Handy, I am 23 years old and I have just started a role with the England women’s under-16s as part of the England Elite Coach Programme.

My first involvement with football came at the age of six when I would watch football with my dad.

I ended up joining a club around the age of eight or nine but had a short playing career because I just fell in love with coaching.

I started coaching when I was 14 and had already decided I wanted to dedicate myself to building a coaching career.

My first proper opportunity came in my first year of university when I looked for a coaching role and found a weekend sessional coach at AFC Leyton, which is an all-girls club in East London. I got the role and it progressed from there.

I went from weekend sessional coach to youth development coach, senior development coach, Under-14s manager and eventually I became the first team manager when I was 21.

Then during my last year at Leyton, I secured my first academy role at West Ham United and I became the women’s under-16s performance academy manager.

My most recent role was a Charlton Athletic’s RTC, working across the under-14s and under-16s in head coach and assistant roles.

Now I am working with England women’s under-16s as part of the England Elite Coach Programme.

Who were your footballing heroes growing up?@rachelyankey1 and @AlexScott were football coach and @the_phproject alumni, @jess_king11's 🤩

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It has always been a goal of mine to gain experience at the international level because as much as you can gain experience at clubs and go to other academies, nothing is going to compare to working for England and being a part of that environment.

A lot of the programme is about coach development and gaining an exposure to that environment, so what is expected and being involved with much harsher and tighter deadlines to work with the players – you have days instead of months or years to work with the players.

So I’m looking forward to being exposed to those sorts of challenges and being part of a team because 80 per cent of my roles have been me as the head coach or manager, whereas now I am going to be assisting as part of a big team of people.

That will come with its benefits and its challenges, and they should help me develop skills that I probably haven’t had from my head coach or management positions.

At just 23, my age does come up sometimes, but it is not something I have ever been bothered by.

People would ask me if it was a bit weird but I always looked at it as if you can coach, you can coach. It doesn’t matter how old you are.

I knew I would have to be really on top of my communication and on top of building relationships with players. I know you have to do that anyway but when the age gap is so big, you have to think about these things more.

So I took these things as positives and just thought of it as I am just building my experience earlier.

Football is a very competitive industry and when it comes to applying for jobs in the future, yes, other coaches might be, for example, 35, but they might only have five years of coaching experience, whereas I have been in the coaching game since I was 14.

So I didn’t look at my age as a limiting factor. I just focused on the experience I was gaining.

I think the England Elite Coach Programme is massively important. Would I be able to get experience working with an England team at this stage of my career without a programme like this? Probably not.

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When we look at the problems of diversity in football or social classes, I am from an inner-city council estate in Barking, East London so you don’t see many England coaches walking around! So I think programmes like this are massive in helping people like me gain the opportunities needed to propel myself.

I think I am one of the very few girls I know from school who have stayed in the game. Coaching is still seen as a voluntary thing or a part-time thing that they cannot make a career from so I think it is going to take a few people to take what looks like a risk and make a career out of it because some people need to see it to believe it. I’m not one of those people.

Hope Powell was the first Black coach I was really aware of and I spent a bit of time at Peckham Town when Mary Phillips was there, so I was coached by her for a little bit, and that was the first time I had seen not only a Black female coach but just a female coach, ever. It was then a few years after that before I saw another one.

I didn’t really see there being a Black woman as a coach as motivation, I saw the gaps as motivation.

That is what I mean when I say I don’t need to see it to believe it because I am actually motivated by what I don’t see.

As much as it was great to see there are women like me out there as coaches and I could use them as role models, I want to become a role model. I want to fill in those gaps. I want to be the one to do it.