Loud Encouragement, Quiet Instruction: the Beau Mitchell Approach to Coaching Skateboarding

Since the establishment of the NSW Institute of Sport (NSWIS) Skateboarding Program 18 months ago, the team has grown to 12 athletes including Olympians, national champions, and World Skate qualifiers.

Now, nine NSWIS athletes are set to represent Australia at the World Skate Games in Paraguay – the opening event of the LA 2028 Olympic qualification campaign.

Head Coach Beau Mitchell spoke with NSWIS Media about the evolution of the program, preserving skateboarding’s unique culture within a high performance environment, and why his coaching philosophy starts with love.

NSWIS: How is the program coming along, and what’s changed since it first started?

Beau Mitchell [BM]: Prior to me officially starting, one of my goals was to make sure that I brought all of the NSWIS Performance Team in [to meet the athletes, and] build the same depth in the relationships that I have with them. Because skateboarding is quite new in the Olympic journey, there’s a deep culture of the sport and the way people operate that isn’t the same as traditional sports, so that was my number one goal. We’re one year in, and that has become one of the things I’m probably most proud of. I have regular conversations with the Performance Team where they’re like, ‘I absolutely love the athletes and the way they operate, it’s very creative.’

NSWIS: How have the athletes responded to joining a high performance environment?

BM: I think they’ve all responded really well. Obviously, some took longer to get that buy-in, but the ones that have bought in and immersed themselves into the high performance culture are seeing the success daily. We have 12 athletes in the program, and nine are going to represent Australia at the World Skate Games in Paraguay. So, it’s showing not just the depth that we have in the team, but also how far they’ve come.

NSWIS: What other philosophies have you been trying to inject into the program?

BM: I’m quite a passionate person, and I coach with love. For me, it’s often not about the medal. It’s about the person and the journey that they’re on, and helping them become the best version of themselves. When I first addressed the Performance Team, I shared my vision of wanting to make this the best skateboarding program in the country, and that meant showing up for one athlete, or all, depending on the day. It doesn’t matter how many turn up, because I’m turning up with the same drive and determination to give them my best. I have that same philosophy with the rest of the Performance Team – being consistent and showing up with purpose.

NSWIS: Skateboarding is an individual sport, with podium success relying on creativity and self-expression under immense pressure. How do you coach without taking away an athlete’s individuality?

BM: Probably one of the trickiest parts about our sport is, people can learn tricks that can help them win, but if you’re taking a trick that someone else does really well and learning it for yourself, you’re always going to be second to that person. So, it’s about helping the athletes understand skateboarding for what they like and what is new and refreshing for them. That is going to create their unique element when they perform. If they can do it in their own way, that becomes something that they stand out for.

NSWIS: Skateboard coaching appears to be less instructive than traditional coaching, almost as if you’re helping the athletes problem solve through their runs…

BM: I like to think that in skateboarding, particularly at the level these athletes are at, there is a lot of failure in our sport. It helps them build resilience, but also problem solving and self-analysis – analysing what worked and what didn’t work. Where I fit is often giving loud encouragement, but quiet instruction. I try to be quite deliberate and purposeful about what I say. Rather than telling them what to do, I like to ask a lot of questions, that help lead them to the answer themselves. I’ll show them videos of their runs without saying anything to see if they recognise what they could improve on. I don’t ever want an athlete to feel like they need me to succeed – I’m trying to help them become independent. There was some trial and error, because you think you need to say something every time, but the more I verbalise, the more issues I could create rather than fixing the problem. I think that feeds their creativity too. If I’m constantly giving them instructions on what I want them to do next, it doesn’t allow them to think freely about that next wall (in the skate bowl). And in park skateboarding, if you go off your line, it leads you to somewhere else in the bowl or park, and sometimes that actually leads you to where the bowl was supposed to take you. Particularly at World Skate competitions, I don’t get to skate the park prior to the athletes, so I’m relying on a relationship with the athlete to get to a place where they’re happy with the run they’re building with my support. I can tell them what the tricks are going to score, but they have to go through that process themselves because, ultimately, they’re the ones performing.

NSWIS: Sometimes athletes can spend an entire training session completing only one perfect run, then spend the rest of the session working on consistency, which can sometimes create moments of frustration and pressure. As a coach, how do you navigate those moments?

BM: That experience is one that every skateboarder has dealt with in some ways, because it creates pressure and expectation on wanting to execute something perfectly. But that actually builds their resilience, so I don’t always rush to pick them up. As a coach, I have to let the athletes sit in that frustration, because if they walk away without having gone through that process, they don’t learn from it. I will always go over and support them if it gets to a high, emotional place, but sometimes, the best thing I can do is sit there and say, “It’s okay to fail.” That’s a really important part of skateboarding, because you’re not always going to make it.

NSWIS: What separates a talented skateboarder from a high performance skateboarder?

BM: The ability to block out the noise when the moment comes, and execute no matter the situation, or the park they’re in. Adaptability and creativity are probably more important than all of the skateboarders understand, because if we think about the end goal of the Olympic Games, we get the park one month before competition, and the athletes have to be able to do their hardest run in front thousands of people. So, the main difference would be how the athletes deal with adversity, and how they can stay mentally calm to execute when the moment arrives.

NSWIS: It’s been about five years since skateboarding made its Olympic debut. How has that impacted the sport in Australia?

BM: In some ways, it’s taken a sport that was for fun, a pastime, and highly creative, to a place where people have seen it as a genuine pathway, and that success in skateboarding can be achieved through hard work. There wasn’t a clear pathway before – those that were able to create a career for themselves in skateboarding were often seen as outliers, whether they were filming videos or competing in X Games. Now we have a very clear pathway, whether that’s a domestic or international series, athletes can come into our pathway and follow that all the way to the Olympic Games.

NSWIS: Has the introduction of high performance systems changed skateboarding culture at all?

BM: I would say the old culture of skateboarding would be that smoking and drinking was regular on trips. Now, people are getting out of the van with their foam rollers, and even on some of the professional tours they take chefs and physios. We don’t travel to a competition without a physio, a team manager, or a wellbeing and engagement advisor. So, as a whole, bringing in high performance systems is creating longevity in our sport, which we didn’t have prior. It’s definitely impacted positively, it’s gold stars all around regarding athlete engagement – the way that they have taken on all of the high performance behaviours, I couldn’t be happier.

NSWIS: How would you describe the international skateboarding community?

BM: Skateboarders are unique in the way that it feels like a big family. You’ve got athletes traveling around the world to different competitions, competing against each other, but because it’s a performance, it becomes more about celebrating skateboarding than it is about winning and losing. At the top level, there’s always mini competitions amongst each other, but if you put down your best run, often what you’ll see is the other skateboarders celebrating that. A moment that continues to stick out to me is when we’re at the Paris 2024 Olympics, we walked into the food hall, and the tables were divided by country. But there was this massive table in the middle with mixed nations, and it was all the skateboarders sitting together. For me, that was a representation of skateboarding as a culture. The more we can keep that, the more it becomes a celebration of the sport and that continued family culture.

NSWIS: What do you want the athletes to take away from World Skate Games?

BM: It’s going to be a whirlwind experience as it’s the first event that goes towards the LA 2028 Olympic qualification. But the main thing I want athletes to take out of it is that they should be proud to be not just representing NSW, but their country, and that the experience will be invaluable regardless of the result because they’ll always be learnings from it. This is the first time we’ve gone to Paraguay too, so it’s going to be a new experience for everyone. I’m very excited to watch them all perform!

NSWIS: Finally, what does success look like for the NSWIS Skateboarding Program between now and LA 2028?

BM: For me, future success is longevity of the program; making sure that post-LA Games, we’ve got a continued pathway for younger athletes to come through and learn from the more developed athletes, just like we did with Liv Lovelace, Ruby Trew, and Kieran Woolley from the last games. For developing athletes like Eddie Acres, Taj Wolfenden, and Felicity Turner, this is their first Olympic qualification campaign. So, for me, it would be a continued pathway post-LA, and making sure that when we go into the Brisbane 2032 cycle, we’ve got a whole host of new athletes coming through that are going to push for that spot at Brisbane. Oh my gosh, actually thinking about it now, 2032 is going be crazy!

Words: Rachel Tingey, NSWIS

Image: Mark Woolley