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"Falling off and getting back up": developing leadership in Skateboarding

Published 27 July 2024

Skateboarder Lucy Rafferty Adams is no stranger to getting back up after a fall and she is bringing that philosophy to coaching.

From Horsham, Rafferty Adams is the Progression Project Lead at Skateboard GB and oversees the development of the sport in the United Kingdom.

Rafferty Adams is also an alumnus of UK Sport’s Leading to Perform development programme – an 18-month course designed to cultivate leaders in elite sporting roles.

“Skateboarding is all about falling off and getting back up and that resilience that you build from that, and within my work I take that with me,” she said.

“To be able to think out of the box and try stuff that is quite unique and innovative feels quite comfortable to me but in this sporting system it is quite difficult to do that.

“Hopefully we are working and chipping away at doing that and showing to others that it is really good to be able to make those changes and reflect.

“Because skateboarding has such a strong culture and lifestyle element to it, it has been tricky to navigate having an NGB but with us at Skateboard GB our main focus is that we are led by skaters and we listen to our community.

“Our investment from UK Sport means we have been really fortunate to be able to test in this period without a strict medal target and we’re not being held to real performance-based KPIs.
“We have been fortunate to trial what might be right for skateboarding without it having ever been done before.”

Rafferty Adams first took up skating as a 13-year-old, going on to study at the University of Manchester to be close to the thriving skate scene in the city. From there, she worked for a skate park design and build company before becoming the first chair of Skateboard England, now Skateboard GB. Looking ahead to the next Olympic cycle, Rafferty Adams is working to bring greater compassion and understanding to her leadership, something she learned from her fellow participants on Leading to Perform. The programme supported those working in the high-performance community who were new to a performance senior leadership role or aspire to be a senior leader for the Los Angeles or Milan Cortina Olympic and Paralympic cycles.

She added: “Being able to listen and reflect is something that I worked on this course and having more of philosophy that I have been able to develop and knowing more about what I am about.
“The people that were on the course were quite vulnerable to the group, lots of people put themselves out there and it was really comforting, you did feel very safe and were able to contribute.

“We got to do some really exciting stuff like visit the Brit School in Croydon and looking at how an establishment sets up a really young person led education, as well as how they involve the whole student body in decision-making and understanding how they learn.

“It was exciting to go spend some time there with the students and that really resonated."

Hear more from Lucy by watching the video here.

Learn more about Skateboard GB on their website.

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