Track and field coach Reyneke hopes to inspire other women

Reyneke won the Gauteng Sports Awards Coach of the Year gong ahead of Omar Zain Eddin (table tennis) and Dr Elsje Jordaan (netball) in Soshanguve on Saturday and the R50 000 that went with it.

The humble coach dedicated her award to all female coaches in athletics.

“It is a big honour to win this award, and I am grateful for all the hard work. I want to inspire all the women coaches, especially in our field. It requires hard work, dedication, and my advice to them is never to give up,”  Reyneke told SABC Sport.

Reyneke explained it is not easy to coach in a male-dominated sport and urged women to exercise patience and put more effort into their coaching.

“Women can do this because we are motherly and the athletes like that. We create a safe environment for them, and I want to inspire younger coaches to dream big. They should attend coaching schools to grow and never stop learning. 

They are going to make many mistakes, which is part of learning and growing as a coach in the sport,” she explained.

Reyneke is the coach of African and SA 400m hurdles champion Sokwakhana Zazini.

She helped the talented hurdler win the 2018 U18 hurdles title in Nairobi, Kenya, and the U20 world 400m title in Tampere, Finland.

In 2022, Reyneke coached Zazini to his first senior national track and field title in the 400m hurdles in Cape Town before winning the African senior title in Mauritius and qualifying for the senior World Championships in the USA the same year.

“He (Zazini) battled for a few years to get into the senior ranks because it is easy when you are a youth and junior athlete. But as soon as you step up to the senior level, you compete against older athletes, and some are ten years in the field, and Zazini is still young.

He won the African and SA 400m titles and the first major title he got after graduating into the senior ranks. At 22, he is young and can compete beyond 30 years. He is a talented athlete and will win more titles for his country,” said Reyneke. 

Reyneke told SABC Sport Zazini is training hard to qualify for the World Senior Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in August.

“I coached athletes 30 years and older last year, and I have started all over again with the younger generation. But I am keeping Zazini, and we will see him on the world stage this year in the world championships. He is the only athlete in my group that can qualify for the world championships.

Few youngsters can qualify for the world championships in four to five years,” added Reyneke.

She has been a coach for five years and trains a group of athletes at the High-Performance Centre at the University of Pretoria.

Reyneke holds a level three coaching qualification from Athletics South Africa (ASA), the highest coaching level in the country. She also has a Master's Coaching qualification from the SA Coaching Association and a Level One World Athletics Coaching Certificate.