The 2012 ISAF Training Scholarship at the Rockley International Academy venue in Poole, UK has now been underway for 3 weeks and all 7 candidates are continuing to benefit from their experiences here.
Richard Percy, ISAF Training Scholarship Co-ordinator and Managing Director or Rockley International, shares his thoughts on the Scholarship so far:
“The 2012 ISAF Training Scholarship has once again delivered a group of highly motivated candidates all with the common goal and passion to developing sailing participation within their countries. The Member National Authorities (MNAs) who support their candidates on the ISAF Training Scholarship tend to set their sights on increasing sailing participation however more often than not add into the equation achieving regional and international success at performance level.
“From day one the ISAF Training Scholarship has highlighted that the secret to sustainable long term sailing success lies in focusing on both increasing sailing participation at the bottom of the pyramid as well as the development of a performance pathway to educate athletes as they progress, whether it is at a regional, national or international level.
“In order for MNAs to achieve sustainable long term success in sail racing they must increase participation at ‘grass roots’. This increase will help to ensure there are adequate numbers of sailors progressing through the pyramid at any one time. It is essential that these athletes are able to access excellent club, regional and national race coaching.
“Within the last two weeks the ISAF Training Scholarship candidates have been working heavily on developing an understanding on how to produce a structured sailing coach education pathway that trains participation (learn to sail) and performance (learn to race) coaches. Both pathways focus on giving MNAs an educational structure to develop coaches from within rather than relying on external experts. All of these coaching ‘pathways’ in both domains (participation and performance) are in line with the guidelines set out in the International Council for Coaching Excellence ‘International Sports Coaching Framework’ document which was launched during the 2012 Olympic Games at the Global Coaches House in London.”
2010 Scholarship Graduate, now National Sail Training Programme and High Performance Manager for South African Sailing, Rob Holden is part of the coaching team for the Level 1 Technical Course and multihull sailing modules. He explains his findings so far:
“The Level 1 Coaches Course section of the 2012 ISAF Training Scholarship has once again highlighted the different needs for developing nations around the world. The different federations vary from very small with 1 or 2 clubs that have little or no grass roots work happening to larger federations with many areas of national programme structure already in place . This has made for an interesting beginning, giving these candidates the tools they need to successfully develop and implement their new training schemes.
The weather has mostly played the game and we have had two good days on the water this week where the candidates have gone through the steps of teaching people to sail both from within the boat and also from a powerboat. The whole concept of a structured sequence of teaching is new to the scholarship candidates and it has taken some time for them to get used to working within these parameters but they now have learned the value of this process. All in all this group of candidates are very keen to learn and take all their new knowledge back to their countries with them.’
The 2012 Scholarship candidates are:
Graham Numa – Papua New Guinea
Yousuf Al Bastaki – UAE
Sulueti Dimanaleba Rauqeuqe (Lewa) – Fiji
Alberto Helio Darosa – Mozambique
Ahmed Samir – Egypt
Julia Caroline Shaw – Vietnam
Brice Jacobsen Andrianirina – Madagascar
For anyone wishing to know how they or their country could benefit from this Scholarship Course please visit our website here.
Regular updates, including photographs of all course activity will be shown on our dedicated ISAF Training and Development Facebook page here and updates will be available on Twitter via @connect2sailing
For all of the programmes and initiatives that have been developed by ISAF in order to help increase global participation in the sport, please visit our dedicated training pages here or contact the ISAF Training and Development Department here.
