The Regional Coach

Who am I?

I’m an IT consultant (computer geek extraordinaire!) by trade, I live in Sittingbourne Kent. But hat’s not the important bit. I’ve been diving properly since 1992 when I joined my current branch Swale Divers. I had my first try dive about two years before that.

I’m a BSAC First Class Diver and Advanced Instructor. I’ve been an Area Coach teaching on regional and Instructor Training Scheme (ITS) events for four years. I enjoy all aspects of diving from shallow single cylinder reef diving to deep rebreather trimix wreck diving and pool training to Advanced Diver training.

What is the role of Regional Coach and the region?

Regional Coach is a volunteer part time role. The Regional Coach is leader of the regional team. In the South East I’m lucky to have a very strong keen team of Area Coaches, Instructors and other volunteers (SDCO, webmaster and treasurer to name but a few). The team’s role is to provide support to the branches and members (including direct members) within the region in a number of ways including:

Run Skill Development Courses (SDCs) which branches may not have the instructors or equipment to run themselves.
Providing instructors to assist in branch with SDCs or any other training where the branch may be short of instructors
Communicate information on news, best practice, updates and policy from BSAC National Diving Committee (NDC), council and HQ
Provide mentoring for branch officers and instructors
Encourage inter-branch relations to share instructors, resources and boat spaces
Be a fountain of knowledge for all members in the region on BSAC policy, procedure, training materials, instructor technique, diving technique, in fact anything diving related
Run expeditions to do the kind of diving many branches don’t have the experience, numbers or resources to organise themselves

What are my aims?

In short you tell me! I would like to hear from as many as possible as to what you would like the region to do for you.

I would particularly like to improve relations between the branches and members to the extent that the regional team almost become ‘virtual members’ of your branches. The regional team are not there to police branches, to spy on them or report to NDC/council/HQ, they are all keen divers and instructors who just want to go diving and help. There is no ‘BSAC’ we are all the BSAC, we are a club as whole. There is a common misconception that I would like to dispel that HQ are BSAC and run BSAC. BSAC is run by the membership overall by council and NDC with the support of the coaching scheme and HQ.

If you have any queries about how we can help you, ideas on what you would like us to do or would like to help out or be part of the team, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible on branch visits, courses and most importantly out diving.

Graham Pettett
Regional Coach

southeast.coach@bsac.com
07841 431689

This page was last updated on : 31 Dec 2007