You might remember that last year, we brought you news of the Derby Stance Coaching Summit - the UK's first Coaching-focussed conference designed to bring together coaches across the UK to share their experiences in workshops lead by some of the greatest coaches in Roller Derby - including Texas Rollergirls' Smarty Pants (Nadia Kean), who we interviewed. Derby Stance was a huge success - we've not met any of the 80 attendees who had a bad thing to say, and many who talked about the connections, lessons and ideas that they'd collected over the experience.

Derby Stance was organised by Rule 56, the coaching enterprise founded by Rainy City Roller Derby's Hydra (Maha El Nasser) and Leeds Roller Derby's Ecky Thump (Ruth Saxton). Now, working again with Smarty Pants, they're back with another development for the UK Coaching community, and beyond - e-learning and conferencing in a series of targeted webinars.

The idea, as Ecky Thump explained, is to provide a much more accessible set of coaching resources. “In between skating, coaching, training, watching and doing admin, skaters have very little time for extra derby learning. Add travel and cost into that and conferences are a bit of a luxury. We hope that these webinars will give more coaches, not just those who live near to Yorkshire or whose leagues are willing to subsidise, the opportunity to engage with some of the talented coaches we have lined up.”

The targeted scope of each webinar is also designed to assist with this, as the focus means that they can fit into an evening's session.

The pilot webinar - entitled "Coaching 101", and based on the introductory coaching talk which Smarty Pants delivers with her own coaching company Get Smarty Coaching - is available for sign-up now.

The session will begin at 19:00 (GMT) on Monday March 6th, and will last for approximately 1 hour. Event details at: https://www.facebook.com/events/1451911724851183/permalink/1463473710361651/ where a registration link will become available "before the end of the week".

For the time in your timezone, click here: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Coaching+101%3A+Rule+56+and+Smarty+Pants&iso=20170306T19&p1=136&ah=1