East Wagga Kooringal re-sign Amy Coote as women's coach

The veteran player has been with club since their inaugural women's season in 2020.

Hawks were eliminated in the preliminary finals of the 2022 season, and Coote is determined to make it further next year.

The club has focused on developing positive cultures around women's and girl's football during the junior winter season, which Coote said has been beneficial to all involved.

"The club's involved women's football a lot more this year. This year we had a full female coaching squad for the youth girls, so our senior women's players stepped up and coached the juniors," Coote said.

"It's good for the juniors to have someone to look up to," she said.

Coote said it's beneficial to have women coaching within the competition, as it has differences to the well developed men's league.

Many players joining teams have never played football competitively, with opportunities to pursue the game not available to them when they were younger.

Though experienced juniors are starting to age into senior teams, many older players did not have this experience.

"It's a lot different to the guys, we've got to start with basic skills and the structure of the game because females haven't been playing since Auskick like the boys have," Coote said.

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Recent seasons have seen the team struggle to get numbers at pre-season training sessions but Coote isn't worried, saying once the season comes around she could field two teams she has so many players.

"I think pre-season kind of scares some people off, I've had people say the girls train harder than the boys," she laughed.

With only six weeks in the Southern NSW Womens home and away season, there's no time to mess around and Coote said getting game fit ahead of round one will be a key focus.

"We don't have the opportunity to train for weeks and get that game fitness behind us, so we want to have a really strong pre-season," Coote said.

Coote hopes to develop strong on and off field relationships among her players, with hopes to embed a passion to play for, and not just with, each other.

Over the coming seasons Coote would like to see the competition expand, providing local players with the support to flourish at home.

"A lot of girls travel across to Canberra to play football and it's a three-hour journey with 4am starts to get across there. The ultimate goal would be for them to continue to play a longer season in Wagga, in their own back yard," she said.

"This generation's very fortunate these days, they've got that pathway now here locally, they've got that opportunity and they've got to work hard for it if that's what they want."

Coote said she will begin her preseason program in October, ahead of the February season.

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