Coach and mum on a mission
Wales former international Nic Evans, having coached Kings Cross Steelers for three years, ending with an unbeaten season, took a year out to adopt three little children with her former England international partner and Wasps team mate Shelley Rae. Now Nic is looking for a new coaching challenge.
“By the time we adopted,” says Nic, “I was 40 and Shelley 41 and, because you have to wait a while until adopting again and we wanted a big family, we thought why not three, they can grow up together.”
Nic says their two sons are very close and their oldest is “definitely an alpha female”. You have to think that’s hardly surprising. Shelley was the first female IRB Women's Personality of the Year award winner, and one of the world’s best kickers and fly-halves of her day, having won 44 caps and scored 258 points for her nation. Nic moved to London to play rugby for Wasps for nine years and “a later developer” played flanker for Wales, aged 27.
Now a lecturer at St.Mary’s University after a career in teaching, Nic’s time at Kings Cross Steelers, saw her as the only female Director of Rugby in Essex, which she says sometimes “raised an eyebrow or two!”
Easier to be a gay female player
She says that when she got one of her first jobs as a PE teacher she was told that they appointed her because the other candidate looked as though she was gay. She understands how positive it is for gay men to be part of a team like Steelers, why “it’s a pretty special place.”
“As a gay female, my experience of playing rugby was entirely positive, that it was a really safe space. Then I went to Steelers and found gay men’s experience wasn’t the same.
“We have a lot more work to do,” says Nic. “What’s special about rugby is the camaraderie, the social side and if you play and then have to disappear off to your other life why would you stay? We need a situation where a player’s boyfriend can come and watch the game and share a drink in the clubhouse.
“Steelers is so positive because players don’t have to compartmentalise their lives and don’t have to keep part of themselves secret. That’s bad for your mental health, living life like that gives you a poor sense of who you are.”
Despite the fact that Nic believes she got interviewed at Steelers because they thought she was a man, and she had to convince a few once appointed that she could really coach the team, her time there was really productive. Over three seasons they went from “a social side that played rugby to a rugby team with a social side,” she says. She led them from being one team playing at Level 9, to an unbeaten season at Level 7, with two teams playing in Merit Leagues.
Attitudes to female coaches
Having embarked on her Level 4 coaching course, she says the RFU have been really supportive and she has a fantastic mentor in Coach Developer Andrew Webb. “They really recognise that female coaches have value.”
Nic has had some amusing times as a female coach and laughs remembering one senior rugby man, with a strong Welsh accent, congratulating her assistant coach on her team’s performance and being nonplussed when introduced to Nic as the woman in charge.
What she found less funny was coaching from the sidelines and being threatened with a points deduction by a ref who assumed she was the team physio. What she’d love now is to challenge herself by coaching a good standard men’s team. She would also love to see her children playing but “I recognise that rugby is my passion and I’d never force them to play.”
With more and more female coaches getting qualified, Nic thinks attitudes are changing. Life for her and Shelley, who is a special needs nanny, has changed too.
“I used to be this amazing juggler, able to handle everything. Then suddenly I had three kids and it took a while to start juggling again - but now’s the time I’d like to get back out there and carry on coaching!”
