Lewis McConnell, Apprentice Boccia Coach

Lewis McConnell started playing boccia seven years ago and has been part of the Scottish Boccia Squad. He is a two-time Scottish champion, has captained Scotland to bronze in the Cheshire International Competition, fourth in the British Championships and just recently competed in his only international individual competition in the Czech Open where he finished fourth. Lewis also reached the final nine of the GB fast track programme 2012.

Lewis has previously been a young people’s support worker where part of his role was to help and encourage the young people to participate in physical activity and sport. This inspired him to undertake his UKCC Level 1 in Boccia, which gave him the opportunity to retire as a player and take up a coaching role within the sport as the Coaching Futures Apprentice Boccia Coach.

The role will see him coaching all over Scotland at clubs, competitions, events and one to one coaching. He is keen to gain experience and develop into a good performance coach in the future.

GB Boccia Camp

On Tuesday and Wednesday the 12 and 13 January I had the opportunity to go to a GB Boccia camp in Stirling. This was a great experience for me and my development.

Tuesday 12 January

On Tuesday I was working with the BC3s and their coach Glynn Tromans. Glynn gave me the chance to coach a two hour session which I had already prepared. The session went really well, got some top tips and the players seemed to really enjoy it. Feedback was really positive and GB said that they’re going to use bits of my session that they don’t usually do in their future training sessions after positive feedback from the players!

After lunch Glynn led a world class training session which was really beneficial as it let me see how the best in the world train. I also had the opportunity to watch the physios and strength and conditioning coach work with the players, this gave me an insight of the other important pieces of the jigsaw to model a world class athlete.

Wednesday 13 January

Wednesday wasn’t as long a day as Tuesday but was still packed full of world class boccia. Claire, who is the performance coach for the BC1-4 players, showed me the player training diaries.  It was really interesting to see what she as coach could gain from looking at the diaries.

Some of the players did some skill tests with Chris Wagg, the sports scientists and coach of the BC1/2 team, seeing the guy doing the tests reminded me of my time in the fast track programme. All the rest of the squad did a mixture of two ends games and individual training sessions. I helped some of the players with their individual training sessions.

The camp ended with everyone playing pairs games even a couple of the coaches joined in (which was very entertaining). It was really good to watch a really high standard of games and was the best way to end a really amazing couple of days.

I would like to thank Scottish Disability Sport and GB Boccia for organising this great opportunity. It’s really gave me confidence and I learned a lot and will use it all in my development as a coach. I can’t wait to go to my GB camp in Sheffield at the end of February.

Lewis