In sport, it is all too often easy to blow past the individual feelings of athletes and how we, as coaches, can adapt our practice to provide the best platform for athletes to succeed. Intrigued by this topic, I sat down with Dr Laura Graham, lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland and researcher into sociological issues in sport, to dive deeper into this area and discuss how best to communicate and organise in our sport to deliver equal opportunities and a positive environment for all.
Firstly, I quizzed Dr Graham on her research and what has drawn her to conduct such high-level studies on her chosen areas of expertise.
“In my day job, I’m an academic in the field of sport, exercise, and health. My main areas of expertise are social issues in sport, work-based learning, and coach development.
“I strongly believe everyone has the right to be able to move their bodies in a way that is comfortable and brings them joy. I’m committed to exploring and tackling barriers to sport and education and to ensuring participation in sport is representative of wider, diverse society.”
Dr. Graham first became involved in rowing in her late twenties and did not have a rowing background, having never considered it as an option during her school years. This, unfortunately, reflects a common pattern of young girls disengaging from sports, Laura notes.
It was only when she participated in rowing at Strathclyde Park Rowing Club’s excellent RowStart programme that she began to excel. Having gradually mastered the sport, she now holds many esteemed positions at her home club and within the governing body of Scottish Rowing. Dr. Graham is currently the Captain of Strathclyde Park Rowing Club, as well as the Director of Coaching and Chairwoman of the Board at Scottish Rowing.
Dr Graham said that she has found the entire experience of being involved at her home club has been her highlight of rowing.
She said:
“I love that I have a group of teammates who become friends, even though we might all be very different and would never normally meet. I really enjoy competing and particularly the yearly trips to World Masters. But it’s coaching and seeing others find a love for the sport that means the most to me.”
Dr Graham and the Masters Performance Squad at Strathclyde Park Rowing Club take the trip to the World Masters Rowing Regatta during European hosting years, entering many boats and racing at the highest international masters level. During my own time at Strathclyde Park, I have had the immense pleasure of coaching Dr Graham and the rest of the Masters Performance Squad. They are all determined and strong rowers with an extraordinary sense of community.
Touching further on her role as Senior and Master Development Coach at Strathclyde Park, I asked Dr Graham what she has found most rewarding about getting involved at rowing, within her club and her coaching career.
“It’s a bit of a cliché but there is nothing that can ever beat seeing the smiles on people’s faces when they realise they can do something they couldn’t a few hours ago. It’s particularly rewarding to see people who have had a fear of the water or really doubted themselves find joy through being out on the lochs and rivers.
“Finding power and strength in our bodies in hugely empowering, particularly for those who perhaps haven’t experienced it when they were younger. I firmly believe there is a form of movement for each and every body, it’s about putting the individual at the heart of the process and helping them find that joy, whatever that looks like for them.”
Dr Graham has long been involved in coaching. She has invested a lot of time into coach education both in her research and within rowing. She was recently appointed to the esteemed role of Director of Coaching at Scottish Rowing and within this role is actively seeking to improve Scotland’s coaching network and better support Scotland based rowing coaches.
Dr Graham and I currently work closely at Strathclyde Park Rowing Club managing the senior and master squad, where Laura is responsible for development, and I manage the performance coaching.
Dr Graham is a huge proponent for the power of great coaching.
“Coaches play a huge role in our sport, and indeed any sport, in lots of way. The first thing is obviously safety. Rowing has the potential to be a dangerous sport, taking place as it does on a variety of different types of water, and the body of knowledge required to keep people safe should never be underestimated.
“It’s also our duty in sport to take care of both children and adults in terms of safeguarding them from other forms of harm. For children, this responsibility is clearer. We have strict policies on how to minimise risk of harm to young people. But it’s also important we ensure we are not using harmful strategies when working with adults. Sport is unfortunately an area which has often been blotted with a dark history of poor or abusive practices – a modern, professional coach has a duty to educate themselves on contemporary and best practice, and to ensure they put athlete wellbeing before everything else.
“I believe it’s also a coach’s duty to ensure the sport is open and inclusive, not just passively but actively seeking out those who might be marginalised and excluded. It may sound as though this is just the job of the recreational or outreach coach but, as with safeguarding, tackling marginalisation of certain groups in society is everyone’s responsibility. I think greater education on how we can all do this is really important in new coach education structures and I’ve been delighted to see the emphasis on this element in the redeveloped British Rowing courses. It’s been a privilege to have worked with the Learning, Education, and Development Team on the new format and to have delivered the pilot sessions for them.”
Dr Graham noted that there are challenges facing delivering a quality experience through coaching for everyone in sports today, and that rowing is not immune to these problems. I asked Dr Graham what she believed to be the greatest challenge in coaching in this age.
“I think all sport suffers from increasing budgetary restrictions and in sport we have a such a huge reliance on the voluntary workforce. Having volunteers is a wonderful thing and should always be encouraged but we do often end up with a small group of people doing so much work for sport than it often becomes unsustainable and they can easily burn out and disengage. Burnout is also an issue with paid coaches too – we expect a lot from coaches and they often sacrifice their own personal lives because they love their sport and care about their athletes perhaps more than they do about their own health and wellbeing. Heavy reliance on a volunteer workforce also makes professionalisation of the role more challenging too. It’s hard to insist everyone has a coaching qualification and ongoing CPD when so many are hardworking helpers who are supporting their clubs on top of managing full time work and the rest of their responsibilities. There needs to be some balance in recognising the importance of education and development alongside the knowledge that for many, a qualification just isn’t on their radar, they are just helping out.”
Furthering our discussions about coaching, I wanted to ask Dr Graham about her research into different coaching philosophies and their impact when coaching our great athletes.
“Understanding our coaching philosophies, and indeed philosophy towards life in general, plays a crucial role in helping guide our decision making. If we can authentically reflect on our core values, our ethics, and our personal moral standards, it makes dealing with challenging situations more straightforward. If we consider our actions and potential outcomes from our actions in light of our core values and how we wish to treat people, it can make the path forward seem far clearer. It can be difficult to remain true to our philosophies sometimes, particularly if these don’t match our environment, context, or organisational culture, but it is crucial in feeling comfortable with ourselves and our coaching.”
Dr Graham also discussed the importance of gender inequality in sport.
“The representation of women and girls in sport has taken huge steps forward in recent years. The change in how female participation is viewed now is already worlds away from when I was growing up. Despite this though, masculine hegemony (the concept that describes the legitimisation of male dominance in society, the suggestion that masculine traits and experiences are the cultural ideal) can still be seen ingrained in our sport systems.
“We see it across sports in general in budget allocations, the fact male teams are often given priority in assigning facilities, in our language (for example competitions described as the “World Cup” and the “Women’s World Cup”, positioning male sport as the norm), and in how female athletes are treated by the media.
“In rowing, we actually have an excellent gender balance, it’s a very even split in terms of participation, but we can’t be complacent about this as there are still imbalances in opportunity for example in coaching, where there tends to be something of a glass ceiling for women. In a world where experience in male sport is still considered more valuable and credible than similar experience in female sport, women can find it difficult to progress to elite levels in their coaching careers. It’s important we remain vigilant in monitoring each nuance of opportunity and in ensuring our language remains inclusive.”
Following on from this question, I asked Laura specifically about the issues surrounding stereotyping in sport, and asked her how it has affected rowing as well as what cam be done to combat it to promote inclusion in this changing sporting climate.
“There are lots of different forms of stereotyping in society, e.g. around gender, social “class”, disability, ethnicity etc and, from the research, it is very clear that rowing has a persistent image around the type of people to whom the sport is accessible. We know from the statistics that rowers are disproportionately from private (independent) schools and from certain universities. This contributes towards an image that rowing is inaccessible to a large section of society, that is it connected with privilege. It’s something that I know the home nation governing bodies are working hard to overcome and personally, I think it’s a shame the sport has that perception because, through my day job, I discuss a wide range of sports with students, often around the topic of cost. When we compare monthly fees, students are often surprised to see my rowing club membership is often cheaper than many other sports. In the current financial climate, where everything is so costly, I think it’s difficult for many people to justify spending money on sport at all but I do think most would be surprised to learn how rowing measures up against other sports in terms of value.
“The issue is clearly bigger than just money, it’s the perception for many that rowing is only for a certain type of person, that they wouldn’t fit in, and I know as Chair of Scottish Rowing that it’s an area where Lee Boucher, CEO of Scottish Rowing, and the full Board and staff team are very keen to make positive change.”
Lastly, on a lighter note, I asked Laura what her aspirations for the future of our sport were. In our world, we see many negative things so it is important to stop and discuss how we can all work in harmony to improve our precious sport.
“My hopes for the future of rowing are that we can diversify our sport, both in terms of those who participate and in the different types of offering available. Rowing can be done in so many different forms and in so many different environments and contexts. We can paddle for fun, for competition, for fitness, for friendship, and we can paddle anywhere there is water. I would love to play a small part in bringing love and passion for our wonderful sport to as many people and places as possible.”
From these discussions, it’s clear that now more than ever it is important that we as rowers and coaches evaluate our practice to best adapt to our changing world, and in this ever negative global environment, we must seek for what unites us rather than what divides us.
Tremendous thanks to Dr Laura Graham for participating in this insightful discussion with me and although I will continue to frequently see her around our shared boatshed, I hope that her thoughtful and inspired ideas will spread to a wider British Rowing level and each of you will come to know her as our sport enters this new, challenging but bright, era.
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