Our Sports Academy has had an incredible year, despite the challenges of Covid. Sport offers autistic people and those with learning disabilities the chance to live a healthy life. As well as make friends, develop self-confidence and learn new skills.
We began the year in style with new equipment for a range of sports through a funding programme with Sport England. So, this allowed us to transition from virtual events to face-to-face sport once more.
We’ve been working with a number of partners throughout the year. In order to bring high quality sporting opportunities to our members. We teamed up with England Netball to introduce a Blended Netball programme that trained staff and members. And this enabled them to play matches in the latter part of the year.
In Badminton, we developed a skills programme with Wycombe Badminton Club. Led by the fabulous Alistair Jones, 33 members learnt to play and enjoy a new sport.
We also ran our first ever Sports Week in August. The Talkback Olympics were a celebration of sport that saw our members participate in a wide range of dfferent sports. It was well received and each year we will now have a themed annual sports event.
We’re delighted that four of our regular sports academy members have begun the journey towards becoming qualified coaches. Finally, we ended the year by launching a new tennis programme thanks to support from the Dan Maskell Trust.
You can find out more about sport and everything we have been up to by reading our Annual Impact Report for 2021 here.
