ECAP coaches turn sports reporters in final workshop
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Grace Cullen 23 November 2012
Coaches on UK Sport’s Elite Coaching Apprenticeship Programme (ECAP) were taken out of their comfort zone when they were set the challenge of delivering a live sports bulletin.
Taking part in their seventh and final ECAP workshop at Ashridge Business School, from 13-15 November, the 11 coaches were tasked with bringing together the skills they have learnt over the past two years in order to produce, manage and deliver the 15 minute, sports report.
The coaches on the 2010-12 ECAP cohort are from a range of Olympic and Paralympic sports and include former world champion cyclist Chris Newton and British Judo Paralympic Performance Coach Jean-Paul Bell.
The ECAP initiative aims to accelerate the development of coaches already within the high performance system, to enable them to have an enhanced impact in the short term, but also to become the elite coaches of the future.
Based around the theme of leadership, the session at Ashridge was focused on the coaches taking responsibility as leaders and looking at how to lead change, skills that were vital for their sports bulletin challenge.
UK Sport Coaching Team Coordinator and ECAP lead Sarah Craven said: “During the seven workshops the coaches have covered a wide range of skills which have progressively built upon one another. We wanted to bring this together in the final workshop and really test the coaches.
“As with all of these activities the crucial element is what the coaches learn about themselves and each other, but most importantly how this relates to their coaching.
“They did a fantastic job and it has been a pleasure to work with them over the past two years. I hope ECAP has armed them with the skills and knowledge they now need to fulfil their ambitions within the system.”
Having completed ECAP, the coaches will now formally graduate at UK Sport’s World Class Performance Conference in Leeds, from 26-28 November, where they will be congratulated on their achievements and have the opportunity to share with the rest of the system what the two years have entailed.
Paralympic Dressage coach, and coach to triple Paralympic champion Sophie Christiansen Clive Milkens said: “ECAP has moved me towards the destination in coaching I never dared to dream that I’d see. I always knew that there was something more inside me that technical coaching could not deliver on its own. It took ECAP and its understanding of the non-technical skills to show me how to find it from inside myself.”
