Former Australian No.1 Nicole Pratt calls for more female tennis coaches

"I have 15 minutes to tell my life story, 48 years of experience. That's two minutes per chapter, and I like a challenge," she smiles.

Speaking at the ACT Women in Sport and Leadership Brunch on Sunday, the former world No.25 shared her journey from a regional upbringing to her current role at Tennis Australia as female coach lead.

Each chapter had its own message. The first one being the words from her father as he dropped her off at the Australian Institute of Sport as a 15-year-old, saying "your decisions are now your responsibility."

Pratt told of being based in America, lobbying for gender-equal pay and finally to life beyond her playing career - coaching.

She stopped the clock at 26 minutes.

The last chapter was what she left the audience with, the value of having a strong presence of female coaches across tennis and other sports.

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Pratt is one of the few female coaches who has worked consistently on tour, with athletes such as Casey Dellacqua, Daria Gavrilova and Storm Sanders. She also leads Australia's Billie Jean King Cup team.

"Female coaches are leaders and role models for our young girls," Pratt said.

"If we don't have enough coaches in those types of positions with diversity then we're not, I believe, catering to a really important population being our young girls.

"At Tennis Australia at the moment, only about 24 percent of coaches are female."

Pratt is five months into her new role at Tennis Australia, which focuses on recruiting, developing and retaining female coaches across all levels of the sport.

Tennis Australia aims to increase the number of female mentors by 10 per cent over the next three years.

They've begun research with Flinders University to unravel the challenges and barriers face women who want to pursue a coaching career.

Pratt said an increase of female mentors is crucial to developing the next generation of Australian tennis participants, for both on and off the court endeavors.

"It's critical. For young girls, if you can see it you can be it. I know it's cliche but at the end of the day if they don't see enough female coaches then they're not going to think it's possible," Pratt said.

"We need to make sure young girls are seeing coaching as a compelling career choice in our sport. It might also be officiating or administration.

"The crossover in terms of opportunities, in other sports as well, keeps our whole community active and engaged from the grassroots all the way through."

One of Pratt's first orders of business in her new Tennis Australia role is the launch of an online mentoring program next month.

The digital network will enable coaches to connect with one another, and she has an aspiration to extend its reach globally and to other sports down the track.

"I'm big on technology and what it can do for every sport," Pratt said.

"When I was first given the job I was handed 10 excel sheets with the names of coaches, emails and numbers. I thought, 'I don't want to do it this way'.

"Before I start to connect with coaches, I want something where we're going to have a platform of sorts, like a closed Facebook group, with all this cool stuff you can do on it.

"For us at Tennis Australia we can scale it and track the engagement. One thing we know is that we need to keep the coaches engaged with what we're doing."