Congratulations to Izzy Ryan, who has been selected by Boccia England as the National Young Coach of the Year.

Izzy has been working hard on the National Young Coaches Academy (NYCA), designed to provide some of the brightest young coaches with opportunities to develop their skills and work alongside other high level athletes and coaches.

Aside from her knowledge and coaching style, Izzy also received this award for her “questioning skills and ability to work independently”.

When asked about her experience, Izzy said…

Izzy- National Young Coaches Academy

In December 2013 I was selected to represent PACE by being one of 18 coaches to attend the National Young Coaches Academy, held at Loughborough University. This camp consisted of lots of mini workshops, and practical scenarios all focusing on how to be a coach and different coaching techniques; it was great fun and allowed me to meet lots of likeminded people.

 

More recently I attended Mega Camp, also run by Boccia England, where we got to put all our training to practice by assisting the England and England Talent Pathway coaches. On the first day I had the honour of assisting with the BC3 players for both the England and Talent Squad. This was an amazing experience, being able to go around meeting and working with all the players, while seeing the astonishing different ways the ramp assistants and players communicate. The second day involved skills testing, with the Young Coaches conducting the tests. While I personally was responsible for ensuring that all players went to the correct skills tests at the right time, this was great as it also  gave me the opportunity to see the different abilities, strengths and weaknesses of each player. Before we knew it, Mega Camp had come to an end, which meant that all the National Young Coaches of 2013/14 had graduated from the academy. Also to my delight I received the National Young Coach of the Year award, this was a real honour as the standard of young coaches was exceptionally high.

 

Forward from this I hope to be more involved in the upcoming Boccia season with training camps in order to increase my experience as a coach. I also hope to develop myself further by going onto the level 1 Boccia coaching course in the near future, giving me the fundamentals to coach Boccia, while I also desire to be more  involved in coaching the PACE Boccia team.  I would finally just like to say a massive thank you to Sunil Birdy for all his help and support over the past year.