Whether you’re a young person who’s invested in their active, sporting life for the majority of their youth, or you’re an older hand, looking to see where you can apply your sporting prowess, it can be difficult to know where to start. Unless you’re fast-tracked into an academy, or through a streamlined sporting success system, you can feel sidelined – as if all your years of training have been for nothing. The purpose of this article is to reverse this feeling, and to leave you with a number of options to pursue to make the most of your sporting prowess.
Coaching
As you’ll know from your own experience with coaches, their athletes are incredibly important and precious to them. They live their highs and their lows, and they cherish victories as if they are their own. If you’re looking to make use of your sporting skills but you feel you’re a little over the hill, and unable to properly compete – then coaching may be the perfect answer for you. It can either be in a voluntary capacity, or you can earn a good deal of cash teaching sport in a private capacity, or in schools.
College
Another option, and perhaps one that’s better suited to younger sportspeople with a career in sport on the horizon, is to combine sporting prowess with academic success. Here, you’ll need to look to a sports scholarship to help you find a place in college, and to help reduce the fees that you’ll pay once there. You can find the best golf scholarship in the country online, as well as all other sports that you may have in your locker. Remember that it’s at college that many of the nation’s best sportspeople find their future career – so be careful to apply for the very best teams and institutions.
Competition
Whether you’re a little shy or a little ignorant of the opportunities surrounding you, you may well not be performing in competitive sport at the moment and that’s a great shame. There are hundreds of thousands of sports teams across the country and all of them are welcome, safe spaces for athletes who want to put their skills into practice professionally. If you’re playing competitive sport regularly, you’re more likely to be spotted by a coach or scout who may poach you in order to join a far better team – and to progress your sporting career.
Care
One great way to use your excellent sporting skills is to become a sports first aider and provide care to the players of your sports team. This option is for those who couldn’t make it to the main team, yet want to stay close to them and support them in any manner possible. As a sports first aider, you would be responsible for providing medical assistance to any injured athletes during sporting events. To begin, you may need to take up a pitchside first aid course so that you can have the necessary qualifications to carry out your duties. You would also need to acquire a valid first aid certificate and be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment.
Social
There is no doubt that sport is social: in fact, for many people across the country and indeed the world, it’s the only time during which they’re social with people outside of work and their family obligations. This would therefore seem an important enough reason to continue playing in sport – either in training, or out on the competitive sports field. Recall that the friends you make playing sport are important, and will support you through life’s difficulties, irrespective of their position on the sporting field.
There are numerous reasons why continuing to play sport into later life is a positive choice; this article simply details four of the principal reasons why you should keep training and competing in your given discipline.
