Twelve months ago, Shayanne Sarsoza left the British Taekwondo National Kyorugi Championships unable to walk after suffering a serious MCL injury.
Last weekend, she returned to the National Championships in a very different role; supporting her team from the coaching chair and leading Kixstar Dragons to the Advanced Team Trophy after her athletes produced an outstanding haul of six gold medals, four silver and three bronze on Saturday.
The achievement represents a remarkable year of change for Shayanne, who took over the running of Kixstar Dragons from her father, Sai Sarsoza, in January. Having spent years competing alongside many of the athletes she now coaches, Shayanne has had to establish herself in a new role while learning to manage the demands of leading a team containing some of the country’s most ambitious young fighters.
Her decision to focus on coaching came after last year’s Nationals, when the severity of her MCL injury forced her to reconsider her own competitive future.
“Last year in Nationals, I injured my MCL quite badly. Which is why I basically took over as coach,” Shayanne explained. “I said, okay, I’m done with competing. I’ll focus on the coaching side.”
That decision began a period of enormous change, as Shayanne balanced university, her own training, coaching her university team and taking increasing responsibility at Kixstar Dragons before ultimately taking over the running of the club’s classes.
The transition has been gradual, with Shayanne and her athletes learning how to work together in a new way as she moved from teammate to assistant coach and, eventually, head coach.
“It has been quite hard to be fair, because with our advanced team, I was their teammate before,” she said. “And then transitioning from being their teammate to being an assistant coach, and then becoming the actual full-time head coach running all the sessions. I know it’s been hard on the team and myself.”
“Over the past like year, we’ve been trying to work together, transitioning between being an assistant coach to actually being in charge and running all the classes,” she said.
“We’ve gotten used to each other. Being a girl dealing with a bunch of teenage boys, it’s been hard, but it’s been going well recently.”
Taking over from Sai, who is part of the British Taekwondo Performance Programme Coaching team, has brought its own challenges, particularly as Shayanne has had to develop her own coaching identity while taking responsibility for athletes who had previously looked to her father for leadership.
“So going from having my dad as their head coach to me, it’s been hard because, in the process, I’ve had to learn how to deal with teenage boys, with the hormones and everything,” she said.
“So having to learn on the way with them about how it works has been quite challenging. But obviously, at the same time, it’s been very rewarding.”
That reward arrived in spectacular fashion at the National Championships.
Kixstar went into the Advanced divisions with team they had every confidence in, but weren’t considering themselves as challengers for the overall trophy, having edged a third-placed finished in 2025. Their ambitions were centred on giving their athletes the opportunity to compete at their best and, hopefully, bring home some individual titles.
“We weren’t expecting a first place win,” Shayanne admitted. “Because numbers wise, we actually have a small team compared to a lot of clubs. So our main goal was just to go out there and show them what we’re made of.
“As all competitions go, they started a little bit rough. But we had the mindset that it doesn’t matter, and the main goal is just the fights,” she said. “So then when they came over and said we were in the top three, we were really surprised.
“Some of our boys beat athletes that are regular international medallists, so there was a lot of unexpected wins on the day,” Shayanne said. “Obviously, we’re always proud of them regardless, but it was an extra step, showing how hard they’ve been training in the build up to this all year.”
By the end of the Advanced competition, Kixstar had produced six gold medals, four silver and three bronze, securing the Advanced Team Trophy and completing a breakthrough weekend for Shayanne as a coach.
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“I’m quite proud of myself to be fair,” she said, reflecting on the past 12 months.
“This year has been really rough, just trying to get used to it. I’ve been having a lot of doubts, being a female coach, it is hard. But I know that my athletes trust me and obviously I’m very thankful to them.”
“I’m very thankful to them for the trust and their parents as well,” she said. “They’ve been working really, really hard and taking on what I’ve said to put them in that situation.”
Shayanne has also had to navigate some of the attitudes that can accompany being a young woman in a traditionally male-dominated environment, but she has used that as motivation rather than allowing it to define her.
“It just shows that it doesn’t matter if you’re a guy or a girl, just as long as you put the effort in, it will always come through.”
For Shayanne, that belief extends beyond her own coaching career. She recognises the importance of female role models for young athletes who may not often see women occupying coaching positions within their clubs.
“I’m always glad to be a role model, especially for young girls, because I know there’s a lot of clubs around the UK that have girl athletes and no female coaches,” she said.
“There are some girl athletes at other clubs that I talk to from time to time, just because I know every girl athlete needs like a girl role model. So I’m just glad that I can be that role model for other young girls out there.”
Her development has already begun to extend beyond Kixstar, with Shayanne part of the coaching team for the British team at the EUSA Combat Games earlier this year, where her brother Zack Sarsoza claimed a gold medal.
The experience proved to be an important moment in Shayanne’s growing confidence as a coach, and helped to prove to herself that she has the capabilities to coach on the big stage.
“I do get quite nervous in the chair, because obviously, there is a lot of pressure because it’s not just coaching your player, it’s analysing the other side, she said.”
“So I am really grateful for the opportunity to coach at EUSA, and hopefully I keep getting more opportunities to try and improve and showcase what I can do.
“I do doubt myself a lot and whether I am capable of doing it. So it was nice to know from Zack, as a high performance athlete, that I am capable of being in that chair, and coaching someone at that level.”
Both brother and sister have helped each other in their development, including at the National Championships, where the pair coached together. As a member of the GB High Performance National Team himself, Zack has been able to offer advice on sessions and drills for athletes aspiring to progress towards high performance.
“He gives me advice in terms of what to do in sessions with the guys,” Shayanne said. “Because a lot of them are aiming for that high performance, so he gives me some advice on how I can run things in class and types of drills.
“And then when we’re both coaching in the ring, we both help each other, because he’s learning how to be a coach. So we give each other the advice where we need it, and it’s working out really well.”
For Shayanne, coaching is now a pathway of its own, one that combines her competitive experience with her academic background in sports therapy and strength and conditioning.
She has continued to use that knowledge to support athletes within Kixstar, providing strength and conditioning programmes where possible and helping injured athletes, while also managing the demands of coaching a busy club.
It is a lot to balance, but the National Championships provided a reminder of why she has chosen this path.
“As much as coaching is stressful, we all do it because we enjoy it,” Shayanne said. “So at the end of the day, it’s really good always to see the talent out there that’s competing and showcasing.”
For someone who spent years chasing her own National Championship titles, the perspective of watching her athletes achieve the success she once pursued herself has become particularly meaningful.
Shayanne has been a National Champion twice, in 2012 and 2023, but since making the decision to step away from competing, she has found a different kind of satisfaction in watching the next generation of Kixstar athletes become champions.
“It’s always been a hard title for me to get, unfortunately,” she said. “So it’s nice that I get to see the rest of my team becoming national champions themselves. And now lifting that trophy.”
That trophy represents the work of an entire team, but it also marks an important milestone in Shayanne’s own story. Twelve months ago, an injury forced her to step away from the competitive path she had followed for much of her life. In the months that followed, she took on a new challenge, stepped into a leadership role, faced the doubts that came with it and continued to learn.
Now she has a National Team Trophy to show for it, and at an age when many athletes are still establishing themselves within the sport, Shayanne is already proving that she has the qualities to become an outstanding coach.
Her ambitions, however, extend beyond one successful weekend. For Kixstar Dragons, the future is already taking shape under a new generation of leadership. For Shayanne, the journey has only just begun.
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