Sport Northern Ireland has developed the Practitioner Development Programme (PDP) to enable coaches, scientists and medical staff in Northern Ireland working at elite level of sport to further their development at a high performance level.

Applicant practitioners are asked to outline their career pathway indentifying how investment could help them to reach their ultimate goal in high performance sport. Sport Northern Ireland can invest in the following:

• Part funding for a placement in a high performance environment;
• Travel, accommodation and subsistence costs associated with attendance at major international competition and/or conference;
• Travel, accommodation and subsistence costs associated with observing athletes or coaches in a high performance environment;
• Fees and associated costs incurred through enrolment on, and attendance at, a higher education course (e.g. travel and car-parking fees);
• Costs associated with funding a research area into an area relevant to high performance sport; or
• Costs incurred by employers or loss of earnings to self-employed individuals, to release practitioners to attend the mandatory workshops and to complete the elements of their PDP award.

In addition to receiving financial support, practitioners will attend a number of workshops facilitated by SINI staff or other experts on a range of related generic themes such as commitment, challenge and conflict. These workshops have theory and practical elements and they provide practitioners with an opportunity to interact with practitioners from different areas of expertise.

In the first year of the Programme (2008-2009) a total of 12 awards were given to Practitioners from coaching, physiotherapy and physiology backgrounds. The Year 1 Report, which details some of the experiences and opportunities that the Practitioners availed of, can be accessed here.

A total of 14 practitioners are benefiting from the programme this year, 2009-10 from coaching, medical and scientific backgrounds. An example of how two of the practitioners are using their awards are detailed below:

Coach Tommy Evans is responsible for Talent ID and elite endurance cyclists within Cycling Ireland. He is using his Award to attend the UCI Headquarters in Switzerland to observe other international coaches and to access online data analysis systems, as well as attending World U23 Women’s Elite Road Time Trial Championship in Switzerland. His ultimate goal is to create a strong team of cyclists to compete strongly at the 2012 Olympics.

For Tommy, PDP funding has helped him gain access to the extra resources required by his athletes, from psychology, advances in training methods and exposure of competition at the highest level.

Maria Faulkner is a physiologist completing an internship in the Ulster Sports Academy’s Performance Services Unit based at the University of Ulster Jordanstown. The opportunity has enabled her to gain invaluable applied physiology experience within a multi-disciplinary sport science setting and to refine and develop the technical and applied skills necessary to work within a high performance environment. The placement has given her the opportunity to continually assess, monitor and evaluate a range of elite athletes, working with and learning from some of the leading applied sport scientists, researchers and coaches in the country.

For more information on the Practitioner Development Programme please contact:

Noleen Lennon – Development Assistant

T: 028 9038 1222

E: noleenlennon@sportni.net