Improving coaching and encouraging more women into sport will be the joint focus of a major sports conference hosted by Government later this month.

The annual sports conference, to which the governing bodies of all sports organisations in Bermuda are invited, takes place on January 25 and 26 at the Stonington Beach campus of Bermuda College.

Sports Minister Randy Horton announced yesterday that Michael Luke, project leader and senior consultant at the Coaching Association of Canada, and Wendy Hilliard, former US Olympic rhythmic gymnastics champion and founder and president of the Wendy Hilliard Foundation, will be the guest speakers.

Luke is chairman of both the national Coaching Certification Council and the Rugby Canada Coaching and Certification Committee. Since 1984 he has been the course designer and facilitator of the Commonwealth Sport Development Programme for the West Indies.

Hilliard is past president of the Women's Sport Foundation, a national non-profit education organisation in the US designed to promote sports opportunities for females.

Horton, who took over at the helm of Youth and Sport recently following the departure of Dennis Lister, said there was a need to address both coaching and female participation in sport in Bermuda.

"What we would like to do is encourage more women to participate in sport," he said. "I think presently when you look at the participation of people in sports in Bermuda just under 40 percent are women. As you know the population is close to 50-50.

"We would like to encourage more women and particularly girls to be involved. It is said if a girl is involved in sport she is more likely to graduate from high school and less likely to become pregnant."

On the coaching aspect, Horton said it was all about providing opportunity to learn.

"To be quite frank, we would like to improve the level of coaching," he said. "We are very thankful for all of the people who are out in the community coaching and what we want to do is to help each and every one of them to raise their standards."

On the second day of the conference the Minister will present his department's "new vision for the future".

"I am hoping that there will be considerable discussion and feedback during this session so that we can learn together the crucial areas of concern and act in the best interests of those bodies that administer sport in this community," he said.