Our Coach Education Director Willie Burns and Club Development Officer James Docherty, have just delivered the first ever Introduction to Coaching course to keen boxing coaches in the Shetland Islands, over the weekend of 13&14 June 2014.
The aim of the course was to upskill existing coaches and boxing enthusiasts who in turn will be able to deliver basic boxing sessions and to help generate further interest in boxing on the Islands.
The course in Shetland also provided an excellent opportunity to explain the role, aims and objectives of Boxing Scotland, which was all very well received by the attendees.
Due to the limited availability of flights off and on Islands, the course was delivered in two parts over two days. The first half of the course was delivered on the Friday night, with the remainder delivered on Saturday morning and afternoon. The Clickimin Leisure Complex in Lerwick where the course was delivered is a first class venue.
Day one covered pre-exercise screening, session plans, warm-ups and reasons for different types i.e. sport specific, stance, guard, footwork and lead hand to the head and body, including fault identification and correction drills. By the time day one was over, all the group were comfortable writing session plans and teaching all of the aforementioned skills.
Day two continued with the participants taking turns of the warm-up for the rest of the group and taking each other through all their learnings from the first day. The session then moved onto teaching the rear hand to head and body, before covering defences for all the punches the group had learned previously. Day two finished in the class with group work and discussions on session plans to cement their learnings and answer any questions on any of the areas covered.
A total of fifteen people attended the course, including four females, in what was the first boxing course of its kind to be held on the Shetland Islands. This is very encouraging for Boxing Scotland as we strive to increase the number of female coaches and female boxers within our organisation. All fifteen people in attendance passed the course, after demonstrating competence in all the required areas and were issued with their Boxing Scotland certificate upon completion of the course.
Once again the ITC course received 100% recommendation from all in attendance, and comments were as follows;
“Excellent for a one-day course, much better than some UKCC Level courses”
“Fantastic Tutors, very passionate and about boxing and it shows”
“It really opened my eyes up to boxing as a sport”
“Loved the course”
Boxing Scotland would like to thank sportscotland for assisting in funding the course, the Alderlodge Guest House for its hospitality, the attendees on the course for their enthusiasm, the Clickimin Leisure Complex and last but not least, Maurice Haining the Community Sports Hub Officer for Shetland Recreational Trust, who worked extremely hard to ensure the course happened and made sure our course deliverers were very well looked after.
