by JamieAston Villa Women’s Academy Strengthens Coach Development With MiMentor, Following Men’s Teams.
Continuous coach development sits at the heart of high-performing environments, and for Aston Villa Women’s Academy, creating accessible, consistent and meaningful learning opportunities for staff has become a key area of focus.
Having joined the club as Head of Coach Development six months ago, Rob Williams has already overseen significant progress across the academy’s learning and development programme – with MiMentor now playing an important role in supporting that journey.
Aston Villa had already integrated MiMentor into their Men’s Academy at the start of the 2024/25 season to create a unified Education Hub – an all-in-one learning environment designed to support the professional development of staff across multiple departments.
“I was aware of the platform through social media activity prior to joining the club as Head of Coach Development,” Rob explains. “On joining, I spoke to Ryan Maye and Crissy Torkildsen and was advised to look at the potential of utilising the platform for girls academy staff.”
From the outset, the platform’s accessibility and flexibility stood out.
““The platform provides a user-friendly and accessible space to share and store all of the coach development activity we do. It also allows coaches to engage at a time and pace that suits them and to track their learning.”
Rob Williams, Head of Coach Development
As women’s football continues to grow at an elite level, so too does the need for modern, collaborative coach development structures that can support busy coaching environments. For Aston Villa Women’s Academy, the focus has been on embedding meaningful processes and creating ongoing opportunities for staff learning and reflection.
Since Rob started the post, in just six months, the academy has already delivered:
- Over 100 sessions and games observed with feedback shared
- Multiple internal and external CPD opportunities
- All-staff CPD evenings and online workshops
- Study visits and strengthened FA relationships
- Increased use of video analysis tools including Hudl and VEO
- Enhanced reflective practice and 1:1 support processes
MiMentor has helped provide structure and visibility across and ongoing in this work, while also supporting the wider ambition of aligning development opportunities across both the men’s and women’s pathways.
“It is great to be able to access the same level of support as the boys’ academy programme and to standardise our processes,” Rob explains.
Alongside supporting learning, the platform also allows the academy to evidence and track coach development activity against key objectives, an increasingly important part of modern football environments.
“CPD and learning can be available to coaches to access at a time and place suitable for them,” says Rob. “It also provides a place to store and evidence our ongoing coach development activity, measure against KPIs and provide an evidence platform for audit.”
While the MiMentor partnership is still in its early stages, the initial response from staff has already been positive.
“We are at the very beginning of the partnership and engagement from staff has already been very positive,” Rob says. “The platform will allow us to provide and evidence coach development support and activity across the coming seasons.”
As MiMentor continues to support clubs across the professional game, partnerships like this highlight the growing importance of accessible, collaborative and future-focused coach development environments, across both the men’s and women’s game.
How Can MiMentor Platform Support Your Club, League or Organisation?
Whether you’re an individual coach looking to progress or an organisation aiming to unify your learning environment, we’d love to show you what your own MiMentor hub could look like.
Let us help you offer more first-class development opportunities to your coaches and staff.
If you want to see how MiMentor can help you, get in touch here – we’d love to hear from you!