Since completing my Coaching Futures apprenticeship in October 2018 I have been selected for the Scottish Squad in Powerchair Football which is keeping me busy!

January was a quiet month for competing but very busy in terms of training for Powerchair Football. Being part of the Scotland Squad meant I needed to step up my own individual training over the winter break for Club Football. Training three and sometimes four times a week, doing a few hours at a time on my own, was tough but it needed to be done and I continue to train hard to try and reach the top of the sport.

We also had three Scotland training sessions in January on the 5th, 19th and 20th. The sessions were very intense and long with us training from four to six hours at a time, working on our shape and tactics. All this training may sound crazy but as a player I love it because “if you’re standing still you’re going backwards”. I’m looking forward to the international fixtures coming up in Leeds during February and future fixtures throughout the year.

I’m also looking forward to finishing the league with Clyde Alba and trying to retain the league title. If we manage to retain it then we qualify for the Champions Cup (Powerchair Football Champions League) so there’s still loads to play for this season.

What a positive, engaging and fun two days at Inverclyde for the first ever residential for the Young Start programme.

This involved coach mentees and the SDS Young Persons Sport Panel members, made possible by a grant from the Big Lottery Young Start Fund, and is a two year programme to mentor athletes to become coaches.

It was a fruitful and productive two days with workshops in leadership, influencing and communication. Though these workshops participants were given the opportunity to gain qualifications and learn new skills. This will help the group to become future coaches and leaders of the Young Start and Young Peoples Sports Panel. The young people shaped this agenda to meet their needs, aspirations and skills they wanted to develop further.

Aileen Neilson, GB Paralympic Wheelchair Curling Skip, joined the group on day 2 of the residential and was hugely influential in demonstrating, resilience, leadership and how to make the most best of all situations and instilling a can do attitude.

“I was blown away by the confidence, ethos, and atmosphere of the group. There is a great friendship and camaraderie that is apparent within the group as well as being athletes and coaches across a variety of sports.”

SDS are delighted to welcome Aileen as an ambassador of the Young Start programme and are looking forward to working with Aileen over the next 18 months of the programme.

Young Start member Hope Gordon said: “I learnt a lot from the weekend and it was great to work with the group for a longer period of time. I thought the workshops helped us improve the skills of leadership and communication and I hope to use the presentation and influencing skills moving forward with my involvement in the programme.”

The Young Persons Sport Panel will meet again in June and the Young Start Mentees will continue their mentoring and coaching programme before coming together as a bigger group in October.

I’ve always been lucky enough to have been involved in sport from a very young age and since moving to Fife seven years ago I’ve been given the opportunity to develop my skills with the support of Disability Sport Fife.

The idea of one day becoming a coach is something that really appeals to me. Being able to learn new skills and ideas that I can teach and pass on to a younger generation of athletes. My main focus is wheelchair racing but hopefully this opportunity will teach me how to coach athletics as a whole. I would hopefully like to be a coach when I finish Wheelchair Racing and learning the skills now will not just make it easier but better for me to start coaching quicker once I retire. It also helps that I will have my coach mentor to guide me through my journey and give me tips on how I can improve or what I’m doing well. I’m looking forward to being able to gain experience in coaching athletics and more specifically, the younger generation of athletes who will be able to learn and progress from what I‘ve been able pass on.

Callum Sloan, Young Persons Sports Panel

Having graduated from university last summer my life is as busy as ever! I am currently undertaking an internship with Scottish Disability Sport in which I am learning a whole new side of sport, through a sports development and events perspective, which I am really enjoying.

I have enjoyed helping out at various events over the past few months and getting to know different sports which I had little experience with. My time during the internship has definitely helped with my ambition to work in sport development and has hopefully given me knowledge that I can use in my future career.

Since October I have also been coaching in North Lanarkshire. This has given me an opportunity to gain experience in this area. It is a really great feeling when the young kids I am coaching enjoy the activities you are helping them with, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to have a career in sports development.

We are half way through the season in basketball and this has been another experience that I am glad that I have continued with. This season at my club, Lothian Phoenix, I was promoted to 1^st team and have gained a lot more knowledge of the game and hope that this opportunity will further increase my ability to play and be part of this team. As part of the 1^st team I had the opportunity to play for Lothian Phoenix in the Scottish Cup. Lothian Phoenix were lucky enough to reach the final. Unfortunately we lost the final to St. Mirren Warriors, however I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at such an amazing event at the Oriam in Edinburgh. My first experience of a Scottish Cup weekend in basketball was an exciting one.

At the end of last year the first round of Women’s League took place in Sheffield. Going into division 3 with a brand new team – Scottish Women Warriors. A lot of the team had never played together before and to come away with 2 out of 2 wins was a great result! The second round of Women’s League takes place in the first weekend of February and Scottish Women Warriors are going doing to Nottingham to play the same two teams as before.

Overall I think that 2018 is shaping up to be a very good year. I am hoping with my internship with SDS I will have more opportunity to help out with Young Persons Sport Panel and other events this year.

I am now in my final year at university doing Sport and Exercise Science – between uni, training and work, life is very busy, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

My most recent competition was the British Para-Swimming Championships down in Manchester, which fell right in the middle of exams. However I am very lucky as I have really supportive lecturers at Napier who managed to change one of my exams to before the competition meaning I could focus more on racing while only having to revise for one exam.

This competition is one of my favourites on the racing calendar because the Scottish team travel, stay and race together. I have some great friends within the Scottish team so it’s always nice to catch up and having a team environment makes racing so much more fun!

I had four races and was pleasantly surprised to get personal bests in them all, including dropping over 18 seconds in my 400m front crawl which resulted in a Scottish record! I also came home with a gold, silver, bronze, so all in all a great weekend! It was great to see quite a few new young athletes in the Scottish Team all who swam brilliantly and have a promising future. I am now the granny of the team, but I’m ok with that!

After an amazing weekend away racing I got a quick bump back to reality by having my final uni exam the following day. I am now looking forward to finally having some time to go home for Christmas as I think my family will have forgotten what I look like.

After Christmas I will start my dissertation, which I am actually really looking forward to, and I will juggle this with training and racing. I am also looking forward to having a bit more time to spend working with SDS Young Persons Sports Panel – we are developing well as a team and I think 2018 will prove very successful by being a voice for young people with a disability within Scotland.

 

London is one of the biggest and coolest cities in the world. It also hosts one of the biggest events on the athletics and sporting calendar, The London Marathon.

Of course being fourteen years old I’m not able to do the 26.2 mile course, so instead I do the London Mini Marathon which is 3 miles. It starts from Old Billingsgate and finishes at the main marathon finish line on The Mall.

This year was my third year doing the Mini Marathon and after a less than impressive performance last year where I finished 3 minutes off my Personal Best (24.14) in a brand new racing wheelchair, I was out to have fun and push well but also for a little bonus, to beat my PB. I always feel that it goes too quickly because I love taking in all the atmosphere of the crowd and racing past some of the most iconic landmarks in London. I didn’t rush off at the start because I knew if I did then I might not have enough in me to really push it for the last mile so I tucked nicely into the pack and let all the older, stronger and faster boys go past me (the boys race and the girls race were set off at different times).

Coming out of Blackfriars and up the hill I decided to pick up the pace a bit more. I passed a few other racers until I came to someone who was so competitive. They decided to start cutting in front of me and forcing me to slam my brakes. They kept on doing it so when the opportunity came I put a nice move round the outside coming up to Westminster. At this point I honestly felt like Lewis Hamilton winning the Formula 1 World Championship just because I was so happy to make such a move in this race. After that I just kept a cool head and focused on crossing the finishing line because at the end of the day that was the most important thing.

Once I came off the final corner I was almost crying (happy crying, but luckily I didn’t) because I looked up to see the clock at just over 20 minutes so I pushed with all that I had left in me to make sure I could make it to the end. Honestly I think that point was actually the most nerve-racking moment of the whole race for me because I could see what time I was setting so I was trying so hard to make sure I didn’t just stop right at the line unable to finish. At last I crossed the line and immediately after felt a huge sense of relief that I had done it. I had completed my third and best London Mini Marathon yet!!!

Afterwards in the cool down tent, where all the racers gathered, I was trying not to shout in delight knowing that I had finished. I didn’t know the time but at this point but I was pretty sure I had beat my PB  (I knew it didn’t take me four and a half minutes to do 250 metres or so!) When my coach Pamela and my mum came to congratulate me they could see the delight on my face and so could all my family and friends. Oh by the way, my medal was awesome as well!!!

Sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home the London Mini Marathon times had officially been released. My time was 21.25, three minutes off my PB and six minutes off last year’s time!!! I was so happy and relieved to finally have confirmation that I had beat my PB! But the next day at school was harder than usual just because of how tired I was due to all the adrenaline the previous day.

Overall it was awesome and a great experience. Not many fourteen year olds can say they have run (or wheeled) the streets of London. After beating my PB as well, that was the highlight of what was a great London Mini Marathon.

CALLUM SLOAN 14 YEARS OLD

Dunfermline, Fife

The panel were invited to send representatives to present at the SDS management board meeting on 12 June 2017. Lewis McConnell, Colette Martin and Hope Gordon gave an overview of the work of the panel and their plans for the future, and answered questions from the board on topics such as the challenges they face as a widely-spread national group, what they see the impact of the panel as being, how to identify and support the next generation of panel members and how the board, staff and panel can best support each other.

A copy of the presentation can be viewed here:

2016 was a great year, I balanced my work (Forth Valley Disability Sport), university (Canterbury Christ Church/YMCA George William College), training (athletics – preparing for Deaflympics 2017) and volunteering (SDS Young Persons Sport Panel).

The highlight of my year was focusing on my training because I believe that I can achieve at the Deaflympics in 2017.

I train five times a week, four of those sessions are with the club and the other session is flexible. Training with Falkirk Victoria Harriers club and my training is based at Grangemouth Stadium for track sessions. I have been selected to represent Great Britain to compete at Deaflympics in Turkey in July 2017 and GB Deaf Athletics do not received any funding from National Government or UK Sport therefore we have to find funding for ourselves. This was a challenging task however, one fundraising idea I came up with was to give a signed photo of a high performing sportsperson to anyone who donated money. I suggested donation amounts for each prize photo and entered donator names into a prize draw to determine who won the photo. Sourcing the signed photos was sometimes difficult but I met lots of great athletes on my search!

I have been working for Forth Valley Disability Sport since 2013 and studying at the same time. I am studying a Youth Work in Community Sport/Social Pedagogy degree so it is an exciting and challenging year ahead for me in 2017.

I am looking forward working in 2017 because there are many exciting projects in the year ahead for the Branch. For example, Forth Valley Disability Sport are taking a team of athletes and players to the Special Olympic Games in Sheffield in the summer, are hosting an AGM and awards night in February and many other events and projects that will be ongoing throughout the year. Personally, I will be completing my Level 5 Degree, starting my Level 6 Degree in May, competing at the Deaflympics in Turkey in July and finishing 2017 higher than I did in 2016.