Johannes-Haupt Completes World Rugby Coaching Course

The opportunity to work with world class mentors and coaches in a highly professional and productive environment was a highlight for Springbok Women assistant coach Laurian Johannes-Haupt, who completed the second and final phase of the World Rugby Level 3 Coaching Course earlier this month.

Johannes-Haupt became the first woman to successfully complete this highly sought after certification through SA Rugby’s Participation and Development department, a milestone in what has undoubtedly been one of the biggest and busiest years in the history of women’s rugby.

Mr Mark Alexander, President of SA Rugby, congratulated Johannes-Haupt on her historic achievement.

“It demonstrates the power of perseverance and the importance of transformation in our sport,” said Mr Alexander.

“By becoming the first woman from SA Rugby to reach this level of coaching excellence, Laurian has inspired not only women in rugby but the entire rugby community. We celebrate her success and look forward to the impact she will continue to make in shaping the future of the game.”

Johannes-Haupt, a former Springbok Women’s player, said: “It was an amazing opportunity to work with expert coaches that has been working in this domain for many, many years.

“I am so glad that we are empowering women coaches not just to coach but think differently about this game while also expanding and grow it. This will assist me, and others to come, with the necessary expertise which is required from you as a coach.”

For Johannes-Haupt, who has played and coached at the Women’s Rugby World Cup, there were valuable life lessons available in this course as well.

“I’ve been exposed to different styles of coaching and different methodologies, and I do believe I’ll become a lifelong learner of this game because of it,” she said.

“Also, the amount of reflection I have been doing due to this program is amazing. In life you reflect on how things went and so on, but in rugby, as a coach, you always analyse, you go look at your preview, then your review. This course helped so much with that.

“It offered me and the other participants valuable knowledge from how a competition is being run – from a manager’s perspective, an events perspective, what is needed from a media perspective and the list goes on. We were blessed to have such different speakers to entice us on this journey, but it also made us aware of what it takes to really be a high-performance coach. For me to be working that space just added so much more value to what I have been doing.”

She also thanked her mentor on the course, Hilton Adonis: “He is an exceptional coach especially because he’s one of the master coaches in the sphere of SA Rugby well as part of World Rugby and his knowledge and snippets to guide me on this journey was valuable. I’m very blessed to have been afforded this opportunity by SA Rugby.”