Each month, What's the Score? will shine a spotlight on a specific department within England Lacrosse, giving details of the work the staff in that department are doing.
April's spotlight is shining on the Talent & Performance team consisting of Jane Powell, Rebecca Wood, and the Talent Pathway Administrator (formerly Emily Summerfield).
What is your job title?
Jane Powell: National Talent and Performance Manager.
Can you give us a general sense of what your role is?
Jane Powell: I think it's mainly forward facing. In other words, I do meet a lot of people at various stages especially on the Talent Pathway; I always go to a Regional Academy and I rotate around. I haven't been up to the north because strategically London, South London, and the North and South-West regions are more difficult for other staff members to visit. While at Regional Academy sessions, I interact with parents and players as well as coaches, and then the same at National Academy sessions.
And then with Performance, it's about managing the National Squads. So, I have monthly meetings with the National Squads where we determine the strategic direction of the squads and then work out operational detail, passing that on to others to implement. If we need coaches for the National Squads, then I am also responsible for appointing them via an open and transparent application process which never happened prior to me coming into lacrosse.
One delicate thing I have to manage now is the balance between England and British Lacrosse because, particularly in the men's game, it’s the same players playing for both teams. For example, British Lacrosse are going to Germany for a tournament and I've had to say we can't take an England team because the men's England players are all playing for British Lacrosse.
Slightly separately, I'm going to a TASS (Talented Athletes Sports Scholarship scheme) meeting on Monday and that's one of the things I've been the most pleased with over the last few years is that we've got 12 athletes who managed to get TASS funding which, when we're not one of the targeted sports for Sport England, is pretty big that they're still recognising us and letting us be on that. I mean, it be great if we had a few more on the scheme but 12 is great and we've maintained that over the last four or five years which is pretty good really.
And over to Rebecca. What's your job title?
Rebecca Wood: My job title is Talent Performance Coordinator.
Can you give us a general sense of what your role is?
Rebecca Wood: The overview of my role is basically helping with the Talent Pathway from the Under 13s right up to National Academies and I have a bit of involvement with the National Squads dealing with their booking for travel and competitions and tours. I basically make sure the operational side of the Talent Pathway is up and running: deploying coaches, making sure facilities are booked, making sure relevant information is going out to parents and players, setting up webinars for players and coaches. And so, yes, the day-to-day runnings of the Pathway.
What are the big projects that you work on every year?
Jane Powell: I would say Rebecca and I work quite closely together, if I'm honest. So, while Rebecca does most of the admin for our big projects, we discuss everything together at the same time. If we work from the bottom up, we run the Under 13/14 County Academies where we get to assess young athletes for the first time; that falls heavily on Rebecca's slate and, to give it a bit of context, we're talking about over 1000 people involved in the Pathway each year. So, if there's 1000 people, that's 1000 minimum emails and then what you get from highly dependent people is you'll get four or five emails that keep coming backwards and forwards, so that can be multiplied quite quickly by five at least.
Rebecca Wood: Especially with the Under 13/14 County Academies, because the players are new to the Pathway, they don't know how the system works, so they're quite keen with the emails and questions. So we try to get as much information out as we can to cut down those questions, but some of them are just keen and want to know the ins and outs of the system.
Jane Powell: When we've done Under 13/14 County Academies, we move into the four Regional Academies and, again, it's about making sure we've got facilities, coaches, and a plan of action, i.e. what are we coaching? Who’s got the balls? Have we got the balls in the right place? Have we got goals in the right place?
After that, we’ve got the National Academy for the girls which takes place once a month throughout the season. So that's the big annual Talent projects but on top of that we run about 10 webinars each year. This year, we've probably already done more than usual because we've been doing a Meet Team England series of webinars where we’ve had six England players speak and offered the Academy girls the opportunity to ask questions, which has been a very worthwhile project. In the end, we'll probably do a lot more than 10 webinars this year.
As far as National Squads go, I have a call once a month where we look at all the training schedules and fixtures and then I try to attend some of those to support the teams. This year, we're branching out a little bit, and I haven’t told Rebecca yet, but she's going to the European Box Lacrosse Championship to support the men in that tournament; we try to make sure we have an England lacrosse representative at each of the summer tournaments. We’ve got five main ones this summer so I'm going to three of them, Mark Coups is going to Dresden for the Sixes tournament there and Rebecca is going to the Box Championships.
Oh, and then we've got a tour at the end of all that for the girls’ National Academy to Prague. As you can tell, when one thing finishes, we've got the next one coming up. It's just continuous and there's never a quiet time, if I'm honest. And by that, I mean there's something every month and then, of course, we support National Schools and The Fly quite strongly so, yeah, it's just continual really.
What new projects have you been working on more recently and what are you doing to get them off the ground?
Rebecca Wood: We've started working with Mental health UK to implement a course, a programme, for the Academy athletes which focuses on mental health in young athletes. Up to now, we've started the initial training with Mental Health UK as well as the head coaches in each region of the country. Next, we’re going to start working with those head coaches on the logistics of how we're going to roll out sessions at each Regional Academy. But all the coaches were really keen to get involved and we think it's a really good programme, particularly after COVID and with a lot of young people's mental health being negatively impacted because of the pandemic.
Jane Powell: We’re also working with the University of Gloucester to conduct some research on the physical demands of the 10-a-side game versus the six-a-side format. We've got GPS data which we’re comparing and contrasting and working with the University to try to get a lot more detail and data around the sixes game compared to the 10s game.
Did/has your role change during the pandemic at all? If yes, how?
Rebecca Wood: I don't think my role particularly changed, but I think the way we work changed. We were able to continue working throughout the pandemic but we went online and so we started setting up webinars and online workshops which we'd never really took the time to do before. So I think the pandemic gave us that time to connect with parents, players and coaches, which I think really helped and benefitted.
Jane Powell: In fact, we were really lucky because, despite the pandemic, we kept going. And, actually, the timings of when we were allowed to play after lockdowns seemed to always coincide with when we had Regional Academy scheduled so that was good; obviously our practices on the ground and the detail and data stuff that we had to send out changed and we were doing temperature checks and all that sort of thing but that wasn’t a massive problem.
With lacrosse not being recognized as an elite sport by the Government, that obviously changed things because we weren't allowed to do anything during lockdowns. So in some respects, especially in the Performance sphere, we're playing catch up and we’ve been victims of the Men’s Under-19 World Lacrosse Championship now being Under-21 because at least one of the boys has dropped out because he was fed up with the schedule changing a lot and it's a big commitment as well when the players don't get funded to commit to that. So it's had a knock on effect on Performance in a negative fashion because we're now having to play catch up really.
Just bringing in the Talent Pathway Administrator role, which was a new role for this year. Did the pandemic allow you time to think that you needed that person. Or was it something that was already in the pipeline before the pandemic?
Rebecca Wood: I think it was always in the pipeline and just because we're growing so much. Ultimately, there's only Jane and myself so we needed that extra help to allow me to work on other things like deploying the right coaches etc. and so Jane and I can make sure we're putting the right curriculum in place.
The Administrator’s main focus is on liaising with parents, talking to parents, sending out the relevant information to parents. The Administrator is effectively the face of the Academy, in a way. So they're talking to parents every day and making sure our customer service is good so the parents feel like they're getting the service they're paying for.
And finally, if you were stranded on a desert island and you could take one item with you, what item would you take and why?
Rebecca Wood: I think I'm going to go up bug spray because wherever I go on holiday, I get eaten alive by any sort of bug.
Jane Powell: Yeah, well, I'm not worried about survival.
Rebecca Wood: Just want to have a good time while you’re there, Jane.
Jane Powell: Yeah, absolutely! I don't know. Probably have photo of my family and friends.
Jane and Rebecca have nominated the Education department to be interviewed for May’s edition of Spotlight on…