Learning curve: Combined Events lessons help Nikki on her coaching journey

Friday 31st October 2025

Nikki Caig was our 4J Community Coach of the Year in 2024 (photo by Bobby Gavin)

North Ayrshire AC celebrate Impact Club of the Year award in 2024

By Katy Barden

There are valuable life lessons to be learned from training for, and competing in, the combined events.

As coach and mum to North Ayrshire heptathlete Jessie Caig, Nikki Caig found herself telling her daughter to ‘draw a line under it’ after a challenging high jump – event two of seven at the England Athletics U20 Combined Events Championships in August – cancelled out the big points she’d scored with a 100m hurdles personal best in the opening event.

‘Some people would have gone home after that, but I’m always of the opinion that it’s not teaching them resilience to just walk away,’ says Nikki.

‘They’re young athletes, they’re not elite athletes, so I need to teach them how to be resilient and to come back from that. How do I do that if I encourage them to walk away?’

Jessie eventually finished sixth overall (4209 points), battling back from her high jump disappointment to deliver some of her best-ever performances. That’s resilience.

Nikki says she ‘fell into coaching’ because her daughter was taking part in the sport.

It’s not an uncommon story; she started to help out at the club, she did her initial coaching qualifications, she saw the promise of a growing U11 combined events group and thought, ‘How are we going to manage this?’

‘It’s a funny thing,’ she says. ‘I did athletics when I was younger, I wasn’t amazing or anything, but Janice Hendrie (Inverclyde AC) was my coach and I was so lucky.

‘I kept thinking that if she hadn’t done that for me, I wouldn’t have been able to do athletics, so I thought somebody needs to do it for these kids.’

She talks about the influence and support of fellow coaches from across the athletics community; those who have offered unsolicited but welcome advice, or those she’s asked for advice because their event-specific knowledge is greater than her own.

‘We actually spent a wee bit of time with Victoria Park (VP-Glasgow) and I learned so much from some amazing coaches there,’ she says.

‘Moira Jordan (hurdles coach) has been the most amazing mentor to me and she’s taught me loads.

‘Gordon Innes did lots of throws with me . . . so I was able to take that back to North Ayrshire (and link in with our own coaches) and I’ll always be grateful for that because you just can’t do it on your own.’

Nikki at the National Club Conference in 2024 with North Ayrshire AC president, Kirsteen Brown (photo by Bobby Gavin)

Recipient of the 2024 4J Community Coach of the Year award, Nikkie brings a slightly unique perspective to her group at North Ayrshire.

In part it’s because she’s a female coach (and mum), but also because of the crossover with her ‘day job’ as a project coordinator for KA Leisure where she works with young people in the gym to build their confidence and resilience, improving their overall physical and mental health.

Boosted by her professional development focus on nurture, she helps her athletes work out different coping strategies if they’re struggling, whether that’s time ‘to chill out and have a wee cry’ or writing their feelings down in a book.

Her approach goes some way to explaining why many of her current athletes, in what she describes as ‘the most amazing training group’, came from North Ayrshire’s community programme when they were just seven-years-old and have stayed with her ever since.

‘We’ve had a couple of athletes moving to different events but they’ve stayed with our training group and we’ve just done separate plans for them because I think it’s key to keep this social circle together,’ she says.

‘It’s been tricky at times trying to navigate it, but the coaches have made it work and I think that’s why they’re still in the sport, because of the social side not just performance.’

And that – the social and community element – is a crucial part of what makes North Ayrshire AC, 2024 4J Impact Club of the Year, so special. Performance is important, but people development, on and off the track, is central to making that happen.

In addition to her role as a volunteer club coach, Nikki coordinates the club’s community programme and leadership and coaching programme on a part-time, paid basis.

The leadership and coaching programme has grown at pace and the club now has 19 leaders and seven level one coaches. Most are young people who were already in the club, but others had left athletics and have since returned to coach.

The programme was extended from 14-18-year-olds to include 12-year-olds last summer.

The 12-14-year-olds can join an in-house leadership workshop and if successful, will lead children round various stations during holiday camps or after-school clubs; the 14-16-year-olds will lead the stations; and the +16-year-old group – who will be funded by the club through their level one coaching qualification – will be employed as relief coaches and help run the club’s community programmes and coach the activities.

+++

Read more from Katy Barden

Luc’s pathway from grass roots in Banchory

Meet mountain runner Kirsty Skye Dickson

Life hurdles no barrier for Jane

+++

‘It’s amazing to see all these young people who are really positive about taking up a coaching role in scottishathletics,’ she adds.

‘There’s a dropout rate around age 15 for various reasons but we’ve found that this has helped keep them in the sport.’

Her younger daughter Lilly is a case in point.In contrast to sister Jessie (who is a relief coach at the club as well as a competitive athlete), the coaching and leadership programme – in particular her role with one of the club’s two additional support needs (ASN) groups – is her primary motivation to stay involved. And, without the leadership programme, the growth of the ASN programme would not have been possible.

North Ayrshire AC is thriving. Community membership for young people age 3-12 has almost doubled over the last 12 months and the club has been shortlisted for the Janice Eaglesham MBE Para Development Club of the Year ahead of the 2025 scottishathletics 4J Annual Awards.

Thankfully, Nikki is not alone in her endeavours to make it a success.

‘It’s like a family,’ she says. ‘It’s a very cliché thing to say but everybody just pulls together, the board, the parents, the coaches.

‘I saw a post recently from one of my young athletes saying something like, ‘I might not be very good at athletics . . . But it’s made me the best friends‘ , and that’s what it’s all about for me; the athletics world is a really nice world to be in.”