GFA 23 Grassroots Coach of the Year Disability Pathway – Nathan Pearson

If anyone can recommend a good cabinet maker, it might be worth passing his details on to Derek Dooley Academy coach, Nathan Pearson. He’s going to need a bigger trophy cabinet-and well deserved too !.

Nathan, a popular coach and player with the www.southyorkshireabilitycountsleague.com , had already won the Disability Pathway Coach of the Year at the Sheffield and Hallamshire FA’s Grassroots Football Awards in Sheffield in October of last year when he arrived at the Disability Sports Yorkshire Awards Dinner at Elland Road in Leeds on 1^st March.

Nathan was one of the winners of a “Service to Sport -Volunteer of the Year Award,” so we decided to catch up with him to learn a little more about his well-deserved award and about the evening.

SYorksACL It’s another well -deserved award, Nathan. Congratulations! Tell us about this recognition.

Thanks so much, this award means a lot to me because it’s about my volunteering which I have been doing for a lot of years now, and to be recognised for it is truly outstanding.

SYorksACL Who nominated you and for what did you receive the award?

For this award I was nominated by the amazing Dawn Wood, Sheffield City Trust , Yorkshire Sport Foundation – Tom Hughes and Sheffield City Council – Gareth Hayden in the category ‘volunteer of the year’.

S Yorks ACL Tell us a little about the evening and who made the presentation. Who came along to support you? 

It was a truly amazing evening of awards for lots of different categories for lots of amazing people, It was presented by Pennine Recruitment, the people who came along included was my brilliant dad and brother and the amazing Julie Callaghan, also the amazing Claire and Richard from Derek Dooley.

 S Yorks ACL You’ve had a brilliant year and are known to all at the SYACL as a really special coach.  What are your ambitions as a coach in the future? 

 Thanks so much that means a lot to me. For me, my ambitions are always to try to inspire young people with disabilities to participate in sport, in my opinion it doesn’t matter what sport I’m involved with as long as I can motivate the participants to try sport and to have lots of fun doing it that will always make me extremely happy.

Congratulations to Nathan from everyone at