Picture Shanghai – originally a sleepy fishing village, now a developed, vibrant city which is regarded as the third largest financial centre in the World; on the banks of the Yangtze River Delta in East China, it will become the host to the largest sporting event of 2007, and the dress-rehearsal for China’s staging of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing 2008. Badminton will be one of the 21 sports featured at the Special Olympic World Games 2007 held in the Baoshan district of this immense and exciting city; and four members of the 159-strong GB team will be competing against players from 160 other nations in an attempt to bring medals back home. Elizabeth Jamieson (Glasgow,Scotland), Stephen Davies (Wrexham, Wales), Rachel Thomas (Oswestry, England) and Craig Sharratt (Jedburgh, Scotland) have been selected to represent Great Britain, but were up until recently without a sport-specific badminton kit sponsor. That is at least until Forza UK and Central Sports stepped in to provide the team with bespoke kit and rackets for the event. Chris Jones at Central Sports, a specialist badminton retailer based in Coventry, and Steve Butler from Forza UK represent well respected companies within the badminton community, and Head Coach, Fiona Reid, has said: "all the players have been training with their respective coaches very hard, and it will be great to go out to Shanghai with not only dedicated players and coaches, but also with the backing of supportive sponsors who will ensure that we all look the part.
The Special Olympics, for which the World Games is the four-yearly blue-ribbon event, was formed initially in the US and provides sports opportunity for individuals with learning disabilities. Now an expanding movement in Britain, Special Olympic clubs are growing in their numbers across the country, and badminton is become evermore popular as a sport which is provided in these sometimes multi-sport clubs. It therefore becomes really important that not only are opportunities created for participation, but that coaches are inclusive in their coaching practice and their willingness to work within environments which may be ‘different’ from those they are used to. Fiona reinforces that: "support is essential generally for badminton to survive; Forza UK and Central Sports have demonstrated how important supportive sponsors are, reinforcing the squads individual identity as badminton players, and creating a team unity for us in the build up to, and when we are out in Shanghai. But if we are to grow more talented players within disability badminton, who will go out to the next Special Olympic World Games in 2011, or who will represent GB at the Paralympics if badminton gets accepted in 2012, we need more coaches to provide positive coaching experiences for young disabled athletes.
In Wales, the issues of developing coaches through appropriate coach education has been central to the continued development of their disabled squad; the Welsh Badminton Union have been approaching the coaching of their disabled players from a slightly different tack – reinforcing a strong philosophy that ‘coaching is coaching’, and when in a coaching environment you work with the individual performer (or group of performers) tailoring the coaching process to suit the individual rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach to delivering the sport. We all know as coaches that we have preferences about whether we prefer participation or performance coaching; whether we prefer coaching children or adults; and whether we prefer coaching wheelchair or standing badminton, but we should be making that decision after we have had experience of doing it, and if we never get the opportunity to coach within that context because other things get in the way, the sport begins to suffer.
Welsh Badminton put together a Coach Education workshop which intends to complement the content of the new UKCC Level 1 and 2 qualifications, and introduce some specific technical elements relating to disability badminton (specifically wheelchair badminton) as well as prompt the coach to challenge some of the commonly-held assumptions they may hold about working within a disability coaching context. Badminton Scotland, the Badminton Union of Ireland, and Badminton England have all invited their Welsh colleagues to deliver a 2-day coach education course. The workshop, which combines theory with practice and intends to encourage existing badminton coaches to adapt the knowledge they already have and apply it to the performers they are working with, has been very well received – with demand outstripping the capacity to supply!
When the new UKCC starts within Wales, the level 1 qualification encourages us as coaches to consider the processes we use when coaching, rather than just the techniques relating to the relevant shots. If we are reinforcing such considerations here, then the numbers of open-minded, innovative and creative coaches will continue to increase, which will foster an inclusive approach to badminton, and who knows – maybe GB will produce the Paralympic and Special Olympic champions of the future. Maybe Shanghai will be the start – so from a Welsh perspective – Good Luck to Stephen Davies!!
For further information relating to disability badminton in Wales, contact Lyndon Williams:lyndon.williams@welshbadminton.net
For further information about Special Olympics, and to keep track of how the team are doing out in Shanghai, see www.specialolympicsgb.org
For more information about Forza UK and their range of products, see www.forzabadminton.co.uk
For a full range of badminton specific equipment, see www.centralsports.co.uk
