In this assignment I'm employed as an assistant to a Sports Development officer within the Local Authority and I have to investigate the ways in which our local authority sports development unit can increase

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Sports Development – Part One

In this assignment I’m employed as an assistant to a Sports Development officer within the Local Authority and I have to investigate the ways in which our local authority sports development unit can increase local sports participation levels.

Task 1

Sports, is a thing in life that we all will be tempted to introduce to our selves, no matter the problem, no matter the situations, no matter the people, but you will always want to take part in it, this is why The Sports Council, introduced the Sports Development section to the UK Sports. Sports Development will give chance to all kind of people to take part in their sport; no matter their colour, age, race, physical or metal disability, gender, financial level, etc.

The Sports Development section introduced a “sport development continuum” so people could gradually increase their own goals in their lives.

Sports Development Continuum

                      

Foundation:

This stage is when a person is introduced to a sport. Here he/she will get the knowledge and the basic skills in the sport. This will take part in schools and clubs. The Sports Development introduced this stage to increase the curriculum time for P.E, to increase the number of children being introduced to sports, to introduce the ethics

and values about the specific sport and sports in general and finally to get them going as a thing to do in a regular basis.

Participation:

This phase of the “sports development continuum” is direct to the persons who are already introduced to a various number of sport and play in a regular basis. The aims of the Sport Council was and is to increase the number of people taking part in a sport, to reduce the quantity of people dropping out and to reduce barrier to participation, such as disabilities, gender, etc.

Performance:

This part of the four levels in the “sports development continuum” is where competitive games and improvement of the performance stars to occur. For example a football club or academy such as Loughborough Football Academy, will be taught by a qualified coach who will make the athletes work at their 100% and will encourage them to get their aims working. The goals of this section are to increase the number of people who are trying to improve their own skills and techniques in a specific sport and also to increase the number of members in clubs.

Excellence:

Finally in the top of the “sports development continuum” is where elite players will end up their career reaching their top skills and techniques at their own sport, also where national and international competitions will be part of their lives. The goals of the top level are to improve world ranking, win-loss records, beat national and international records and individual personal bests and finally English teams to be known world wide.

 

To make sure the sports development section is being effective they had to introduce different target groups.

A target group is a group of people who is put together to focus on them and to provide their own needs more efficiently.

So they simplified different kind of people into different target groups so people feel comfortable introducing them selves into the sport by having people of the same target group within their surroundings, which these are:

  • Over 50’s
  • Disabled People
  • Young People
  • Women
  • Ethnic Minorities

In every big movement in the whole world wide, there are barriers. In sport wise these are called barriers to participation, this means people will be stopped or have difficulties in joining to play a sport, the main reasons for this can be lack of opportunities, can’t afford it, etc.

Join now!

Opportunities are essential to involve your self in a sport and if you don’t have them it will become a problem. For example if you live in a place where you don’t have a sports facility it might be too expensive to get to the place or it might reduce the motivation of the athlete. Maybe no availability of coaches around the area, e.g. if you are an elite tennis player and you don’t have a coach in the area you might start losing your skills or might have to travel everyday to get to the place.  

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