“As an ED&I Lead, I know the importance of diversity and inclusion in society and UK Coaching made efforts to ensure the judging panel was diverse to represent the coaches within the many sports and physical activity environments they make a difference in.
“It’s been a difficult year for us all. The emotional and human cost of the pandemic continues to be felt. The virus has left its mark on the sport and physical activity sector too – almost decimating it. Yet, in its restricted formats, sport and physical activity, and great coaching, has continued. These coaches, in spite of everything, have used their skills to get the very best out of their participants and communities. Well done.”
For this year’s awards, the nominations process was open from September 2019 – September 2020, with people encouraged to submit nominations for all the great coaching work that had taken place despite the pandemic. Additionally, UK Coaching made several changes to the nominations and judging process, including:
- aligning the nominations criteria and questions for each award to the PEOPLE principles of Great Coaching – find out more about the principles
- working with a wide range of partners to ensure the nominations criteria was simple to read/understand and relevant across the coaching community
- fully digitalising the nominations process
- and increasing the diversity of the judging panel so that coaching across all sport and physical activity environments was represented.
The winners of the awards will be announced during the virtual ceremony in December, apart from the winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award and The Coaching Chain who will be announced ahead of the evening.
Find out more about this year’s finalists and the awards by heading to ukcoaching.org/coachingawards.