The Regional Academies of Sport (RAS) support the development of emerging athletes, coaches, and performance staff across regional Australia. RAS plays a vital role in creating pathways for future elite athletes and strengthening connections within regional sporting communities.

The challenge

As the RAS network grew, inconsistency became a major hurdle. Each academy had its own way of delivering information, onboarding staff, and educating athletes, coaches, and parents. This created fragmentation across the network — making it difficult to maintain alignment, share knowledge, and deliver a consistent standard of education.

“We were dealing with a lot of inconsistency in how information, training, and onboarding were delivered across regions. Each academy had its own way of doing things, which made it hard to maintain alignment and deliver a consistent standard of education.” – Jamie Hetherington, Performance Support Manager

Geography added another challenge. With academies spread across NSW, getting people together face-to-face for education and training wasn’t always practical. Online workshops helped, but attendance was inconsistent, and follow-up resources were difficult to manage.

As participation increased year on year, so did the pressure to onboard and train new staff efficiently—without drowning in meetings, email threads, and scattered files.

RAS needed a solution that would:

• Deliver consistent education across multiple academies

• Save time by reducing repetitive training and admin

• Engage diverse audiences, from 15-year-old athletes to new staff and service providers

The search for the right platform

Before Coassemble, RAS relied heavily on email threads, shared drives, and online meetings for internal communication and education. Training materials were often buried in documents or shared links that varied from one academy to another.

For athlete, parent, and coach education, online sessions filled some gaps—but they came with limitations:

• Scheduling conflicts made attendance unreliable

• Engagement was hard to measure

• Follow-up materials were messy and hard to track

RAS recognised the need for a centralised, trackable, and scalable learning system that could serve the entire network as it expanded nationally.

The solution: Building a unified learning hub

To bring structure and consistency across its programs, RAS used Coassemble to create a suite of onboarding and education modules for athletes, parents, coaches, and staff.

With Coassemble, the RAS team built:

• Onboarding modules for new athletes, parents, and coaches, explaining how the academies operate and what to expect

• Centralised staff training resources, outlining key systems, frameworks, and workflows

• A content hub hosting workshop recordings, supporting materials, and athlete education content in one accessible place

These new programs reduced admin, ensured consistency across regions, and allowed face-to-face time to focus on deeper, more meaningful development.

“It’s made the start of each program much easier and more consistent—saving us a lot of admin time and allowing us to use our face-to-face time for more meaningful conversations and hands-on learning.” – Jamie Hetherington

The features that made the difference

RAS relied heavily on several Coassemble tools to bring their learning strategy to life:

• Document-to-course builder: Quickly transforms existing materials into structured, interactive courses, saving significant time.

• Design and branding controls: Created a unified look and feel across all academies, reinforcing the RAS identity.

• Interactive screen types: Videos, quizzes, and cards made content more engaging and accessible for all audiences.

“The document-to-course builder has been a standout. It’s saved us so much time and made it easy to bring older resources to life in a more engaging and interactive way.”

The results

Although still early in rollout, the results have already been clear:

• Consistency: Every academy now delivers aligned, professional-looking training content.

• Time savings: Reduced admin and fewer repetitive onboarding tasks.

• Engagement: Early feedback from athletes, parents, and coaches has been overwhelmingly positive.

• Professionalism: The RAS learning hub has elevated how information and education are presented across the network.

“Even though it’s early days, it’s already clear that having everything in one place—structured, branded, and easy to navigate—is helping us lift the professionalism and consistency of how we communicate and educate.”

Why Coassemble?

For the Regional Academies of Sport, Coassemble has done more than just streamline training—it’s helped unify a geographically diverse network under a single learning framework.

“Coassemble has unified our academies and stakeholders, breaking down regional barriers to build a stronger, more connected system for developing the next generation of athletes.”