Jaime Ingleby: Championing young athlete development in Plymouth 

Coaches are key in creating a positive environment enabling all their athletes to develop. Jaime Ingleby’s ability to do this was recognised at the 2025 South West Volunteer Awards where he won Coach of the Year. We recently caught up with him to discover more about his passion for coaching young athletes and how funetics multi-challenge provides great learning opportunities for young athletes.

A passion for helping the development of young athletes 

Jaime has lots of experience as a coach in other sports but only started coaching athletics when his daughter started cross country at primary school. What started as a way of helping his daughter and her friends out has grown into a true passion for Jaime. 

“I really like seeing the progression of young athletes. It doesn't have to be the progression from day one to winning something, it can just be personal progression. I've found it quite rewarding to see an individual putting their trust in you and you both work hard, then they overcome the barrier that they perceived preventing them from standing on the start line. 

“I'm a very firm believer in the idea that you're racing in your own lane, especially in the younger development age groups. I tell them the people to the left and right don't really matter; it's about your own journey. It’s most important to recognise your progress and follow your process.” 

A supportive environment at City of Plymouth AC 

Having a background in coaching other sports, Jaime praises the support he has received from his club, City of Plymouth AC, whilst getting established as an athletics coach. 

“I'm really thankful to everyone who has supported me at the club. The chairman, Paul, head coach, Neal, and the other coaches all helped me. I can imagine it probably wasn't that easy because I do have a background in cross country, but from a long time ago, so I thought I'd left that behind. I'm very grateful that I've been welcomed.” 

Jaime was recently recognised for his commitment to coaching young athletes in Plymouth with the Coach of the Year award at the South West Volunteer Awards. He was moved by this and the nomination video from the athletes he coaches sharing the impact he has had as a coach. 

“I was very touched by it because I am very proud of all the athletes. But I'm proud of the community that it has created as well. There are kids from all over Plymouth and the surrounding areas who now are good friends. They don't go to the same school, but they have formed friendship groups and it's really good to see the way they support each other. I'm really proud of that, not only as a coach, but as a parent as well.” 

A new competition format tailored for young athletes 

Earlier this year, Plymouth AC ran a pilot of our new competition format for U10s and U12s, funetics multi-challenge (fMC). Jaime praised the development opportunities that this new format provides for young athletes. 

“It gave opportunities for everyone to take part in different events. I really like the idea that it has a run, throw, jump set up and that sort of multi-events format. I think it's just a great way of learning the sport.” 

Following this pilot, Jaime has ambitions for expanding the competition opportunities for young athletes in his local area using fMC.  

“I have some big ideas moving forward, I think creating a local league is what I'd like to do. There are many stepping stones yet, like getting good volunteer support from parents, including from other clubs that are local to us. One of the nights would focus on X, Y and Z events then the next one on the next group of events, so that's my idea moving forward.” 

Jaime would recommend this format to other clubs and schools as all the information needed to get started is provided by England Athletics and it is a great way for young athletes to learn. 

The events usually run for two hours, with half an hour given to each event before rotating. The pilot in Plymouth AC ran for 90 minutes due to weather conditions, which he said was still manageable due to the flexible format. 

“I think it's quite an achievable thing to do. Some of the sessions are really quite fluid, you can do them in an hour and a half, we were forced to do that because of the weather that we had. It's a great way of getting people into athletics. I think schools could definitely use it and it would be beneficial, certainly for the younger years.” 

Our Regional Volunteer Awards and new competition formats like funetics multi-challenge are made possible by athletes’ registration fees and club affiliation fees. Over 80% of membership fee income is reinvested directly into our key delivery priorities.