Name
Bella Jenkins
Team
Schoolboy 1st IV+
Club
Ballarat Grammar
Category
Performance / Wellbeing
Location
Ballarat, Australia
Meet Bella
In 2026, Bella Jenkins coxed Ballarat Grammar’s First Boys’ Four to a historic win at the Australian National Championships. The crew came back from 6th position at the 500m mark to win by over a length.
Twelve months earlier, Bella was coxing the 3rd Women’s boat and had never received any structured coaching for her coxing.
The Challenge
Before using Cox Coach, Bella had never had any coaching on her coxing. Her coaches would put her in boats with one instruction: “don’t worry about your calls, just worry about your steering.”
“I felt that I knew what I was supposed to do in the boat, but I was never sure how to execute things,” Bella says. “I was really keen to stand out, and make sure that my coxing was going to help the crew.” But she had no way of doing that.
“I was never sure if I was coxing right. When I was making calls in the boat, I was never able to make a change in the boat. I didn’t know if I was making the boat go faster.”
How Cox Coach Helped
When Bella first came across Cox Coach, she was excited to find something that could actually help her. After a meeting with Charlie (our founder), who walked her through the platform, “Dad was on board, so I was on board.” Bella thought, “if this is going to help my coxing, then I’m in.”
Bella started using Cox Coach at the end of 2025. When she came back from the holiday break, “everyone noticed that I’d been putting in work” and I felt “a million times more confident”.
Confidence
Cox Coach gave Bella an unparalleled sense of confidence in her own abilities. “Whatever I said, I said with confidence. Even if it wasn’t right, the crew just went with it.” The platform also “helped me understand what we were doing in sessions, meaning that I could communicate well and use my technical knowledge.”
“After I started using Cox Coach, I noticed people starting to comment on my coxing. My coaches said that within a few weeks they’d seen a huge improvement, and that it was clear that I was putting in so much effort.”
Performance
The skills Bella learnt in our lessons also meant that “when the boys in my crew asked me to do something, I actually knew how to do that thing.” Pointing to the Technical Model lesson, Bella said, “I was able to follow the steps to produce the call and make a change in the boat.” Before this season, “I’d never been able to do that.”
One of the most telling moments came mid-season, when Bella was being switched during seat racing. “I was put into the thirds crew, and we actually won the seat racing.” When the boys told her she’d coxed really well, she knew Cox Coach was working.
The Impact
“Cox Coach definitely had a big impact. The crew loved it when I would call them up the seats. They loved when I told them where they were in the race. They loved that I was contributing to the boat speed.”
Before Bella started using Cox Coach, her seat in the school’s top boat was in contention. “After I started working through the modules, I had the seat secured.”
By the end of the season, Bella’s coaches consistently told her, “I trust you. I know how good your calls are.”
Where coaches once would give her throw-away comments like “your steering was good tonight,” they now proudly announced that “Bella’s coxing has become an extension of our coaching. She’s an asset to our crew.”
