Our Coaches

Melissa coaches our Athlete Development Program including strength and conditioning, mentoring, and education workshops. She also coaches our Gymnastics program and the Women’s Only class. In addition, Melissa is an AWF Level 1 Weightlifting Coach and presents the education component of our Youth Scholarship Program. Melissa is one of Australia’s most successful divers and has had a career spanning over 20 years. She is a 4x Olympian and Olympic Silver and Bronze medalist and has won multiple Commonwealth Games, World Championships and World Cup medals. Melissa made her Australian team debut at just 13 years of age in the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, where she won silver. By age 16 Melissa had won medals in every major open international diving competition, including Olympic silver and Junior World Championships gold.

Melissa has committed most of her life to being an elite athlete and recognises the value of sport and the opportunities it creates. This has instilled in her a passion for coaching and, in particular, developing the next generation of Australian athletes. Given her many years of experience at the highest level from such a young age, Melissa has a wealth of knowledge based on what she has learnt as a world class athlete. She not only focuses on physical development, but also educates athletes on the importance of mindset, resilience, injury prevention, work ethic, nutrition and recovery at all stages of athlete development.

Maddi is a Head Coach of HrdKAW Weightlifting Club and is also the presenter and developer of our HrdKAW Weightlifting Coach Mentorship Program. In addition, she is Vice President of NSW Weightlifting Association (NSWWA) and a Mentored Coach on the NSW High Performance Coaching Team (HPCT). She is an AWF Level 3 Weightlifting Coach and has over 6 years of coaching experience across weightlifting, CrossFit, and strength and conditioning. Since establishing the club in 2019, Maddi has grown HrdKAW Weightlifting together with Josh to become the largest club and the leading Youth Weightlifting Program in NSW. Maddi’s coaching success has seen many of her athletes reach Junior, Youth and Masters international level.

Maddi has been involved in weightlifting for over 10 years as an athlete and has represented Australia at Youth and Junior level. She is a Commonwealth Championships silver medallist, an Oceania Championships gold and silver medallist, and she also competed at the 2016 Junior World Championships.

Maddi is passionate about growing and developing the sport of weightlifting in NSW and views her roles as both a coach and NSWWA Board Member as an opportunity to implement positive change in the sport. Given her many years of experience coaching female and youth athletes, and being a young female coach herself, Maddi contributes time and effort to developing opportunities for females, youth and all athletes, coaches and members within the sport.

Maddi also has a wide range of other skills and qualifications that she contributes to HrdKAW including web development, graphic design, photography and drone videography. Outside of HrdKAW, Maddi works full time as a Chief Drone Pilot.