Anneline Lewies’s Master’s degree Journey

Anneline’s extensive career began as a social worker in 1988. She has just over three decades of experience in case work, safeguarding, court work and understands ministerial functions. Much of her work included counselling where exceptional listening skills were essential. Being a probation officer, Anneline often did court duty to testify as an expert witness and present pre-sentence reports on criminal offenders.

Anneline Lewies

Anneline believes her experience as a social worker contributes to her ability to grasp information, deduct, assess situations and find solutions in an arbitrating as well as empathic manner. She says that she, “possesses good interpersonal skills, am an excellent team worker, and keen and very willing to learn and develop new skills. I can communicate well with people from all walks of life. My experience as a social worker contributed to my ability to.” These skills may have influenced her decision to traverse into being a thriving sports coach and sports coach developer.

Anneline asserts that, “I always participated in various sports codes but ultimately focused on netball coaching – being a former player and SA umpire. I also learned many of my leaderships skills within the netball sector as an administrator and leader of an affiliated district of Netball South Africa. I coached since 1984 and have even coached in all four domains of coaching: children, adults, talent, and high-performance level.” She also completed an extensive coach developer training programme through the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) from 2012 and completed this program successfully in 2014 as a facilitator, assessor and moderator, and formed part of the SA Coaching Framework.

Interestingly, Anneline’s election as an executive director at Netball South Africa, introduced her, she says, “to the pathways of coaching development, and it struck a chord with me to train and develop coaches. I also served as the director of coaching of Netball South Africa from 2011 to 2021.” Anneline has held the position of president of Gauteng West Netball Association from 2004 until 2011 when she was elected to the Netball South Africa (NSA) Executive as Director of Coaching. Anneline currently serves as the Vice-Chairperson of SASCA (SA Sports Coaching Association).

A remarkable facilitator, Anneline has coached both national and international players who represented the country in global championships, and she is also an educator at the South African Institute for Drug-free Sport. One would think that her hands are full but Anneline’s transdisciplinarity knows no bounds where she is also involved with other sport codes such as Tennis SA, Lifesaving SA, Cricket SA, Wrestling SA, SAFA, Athletics South Africa, and Swim South Africa in various capacities for training and strategic planning and consulting.

Anneline has assisted with coach development in Namibia and Kenya and has even put in place a coaching system for Namibia. With her vast experience, Anneline has further tapped into such by contributing as a servant leader on various boards in roles such as coordinator for the steering committee for the provincial plan of action for children, protection of children in difficult circumstances. She has been a representative on the child abuse liaison committee and Gauteng child protection and treatment protocol and has served in various other secretary positions.

The aforesaid illustrates a virtuosic career of a formidable woman ever on the move to the next step.

A life-long learner, Anneline, grasped the opportunity to study at DaVinci with both hands. Anneline explains that the past five years of study at DaVinci Business School, “has been an absolute journey of finding myself, and of living my dreams, but to also inspire others to pursue theirs in the process. Through the TIPS™ Model, I Identified my niche to examine the talents and passions of other coaches and to employ such to the benefit of others. It was remarkable to witness others trying out new things. Coaches being more pro-active and looking at other ways to assist athletes to perform to the best of their abilities.”

Anneline’s dissertation is entitled, Transformation of Elite Women Coaches within the South African Netball Context. The following objectives were set for this study:

Anneline argues that to become an elite women sports coach does not happen by default, and further comments on the term ‘elite’, that it ought to “be earned through a culture and environment of being truly elite.” She further argues about the importance of a particular mindset for elite women coaches which, she says, is essential and critical to following a growth mindset. “Coaching education, competency, experience, lifelong learning, and turning barriers into opportunities are essential steppingstones in the quest for coaching competencies for elite women netball coaches”, states the erudite Anneline.

When asked what kept her going on this journey, Anneline explains that it was her discovery of “the corporate value of further training and return on investment, which kept myself and the community of practice, coaches from grassroots level and high-performance coaches, towards fulfilling our dreams and still staying in touch with changing circumstances such as the Covid-19 pandemic that could have made us lose touch with our reality. In serving not only the netball community during this time, but I was also able to reach out to other sports codes, serving them to pursue their own dreams.”

Anneline notes that as leaders, “we should co-create meaning and add value to our working environment, be guided by our dreams and the dreams of our co-workers, involve people in conversation, engage in creative networks of culture, trust, knowledge, and integrity, promote innovation end experimentation, and celebrate accomplishments.”

Anneline concludes that, “the alignment of managerial leadership competencies emerges in becoming a global and digital citizen with the ability to show compassion and care, being responsible and ethical, and serving as remarkable [human] resources within our networks. Managers and leaders will probe problems, express problems, and related solutions through computational thinking. They will ground themselves in the present, visualize the future and harness the past and present in an uninterrupted continuum.”