My role as the Director of The Hub, Centre of excellence in Ipswich, has become a very important part of my life, for so many different reasons. The Hub support Team, are based at the Ipswich Waterfront Innovation Centre (IWIC), its facilities in terms of meeting rooms, boardroom and presentation areas gives us outstanding facilities to create innovative and exciting programmes, and offer the support that the sporting community is so willing to embrace.
Fifteen years ago, I launched Sports Performance Academy, which was the basis of the concept we are creating at The Hub, it was clear to me then, that this type of support is needed amongst our sporting fraternity, athletes, coaches and parents. Fifteen years on, our data base of athletes accessing The Hub’s support is in excess of 200 athletes, from Olympians to regional standard.
I’m so pleased we have incredible partnerships with three jewels of the Ipswich Sporting Crown, Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club, Ipswich School and Teamipswich Swimming, lead by Olympic Coach Dave Champion. Between them, they have a portfolio of simply incredible athletes that are ranked on a National and International level, as Director of The Hub, I’m very proud that we can offer our support, and be embraced as a small part of their support team.
The Hub is offering all the young aspirational athletes some very valuable support, which includes nutritional advice and mental skills training, we are also launching our Hub Athlete, Parent Support programme next week. This is proving to be very popular amongst the sporting community, with 70 places already being taken.
Athletes from Ipswich School, swimming and the gymnastics have attended the state-of-the-art sports science Laboratory at The University of Suffolk, as part of their support programme. Supporting aspirational athletes is a 7 day a week business, last week proved no different, with a visit from the top gymnasts from Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club. It was jaw dropping to actually see what these young athletes are capable of, physically and mentally.
Part of the programme involved checking hydration levels, using our Osmometer Unit, this required all the young gymnasts to bring urine samples into the Laboratory to be tested by Team Hub members. They are all involved in a maturation programme, this keeps a very close eye on the rate of growth of the athlete’s body, this is a very important aspect of a young developing athletes programme, it’s important for the technical coaches to know when their gymnasts are going through a growth spurt. They were all tested on the Force Plate as well, this gives very detailed data regarding the force that these young athletes can produce through their lower bodies, an aspect that is absolutely critical in the world of gymnastics. Ongoing monitoring enables us to inform the coaching team of progression, or indeed regression.
Working with this calibre of athletes is hugely exciting for Team Hub, 2018 was a great year for Pipers vale Gymnastics with champions at club, county and regional levels as well as national champions, Great Britain squad members and international call ups.
2019 has also started on a high; in January, Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club welcomed the news that 3 of their development gymnasts; Grace Wardley, Ellie Cornforth and Aaliyah Manning had been selected for the Great Britain Home nations squad as well as a further gymnast; Aniya Barrado  being selected for Great Britain Performance Pathway. Their boys squad has gone from strength to strength; this year they now have 4 members in the England squad; Rishad Al-amin, Luca Hammond, Charlie Harvey-Lloyd and Daniel Leighton-Scott. Cameron Lister maintained his place in the Scottish Junior squad, Adam Steele continues his journey with Ireland; maintaining his place in the Irish Senior squad and Dominic Bigbsy has been selected for the senior New Zealand squad for the first time this year.
Cameron Lister was crowned all round Scottish junior champion in February this year and will continue to compete for Scotland at the Home Nations Tournament in April. Adam will also compete internationally at the World Cup representing Ireland and he is a hopeful for the 2019 world Championships and the 2020 Olympics. Dominic Bigsby has been selected to compete for New Zealand at the 2019 World Cup events in Baku and Doha. Charlie Harvey-Lloyd will also compete in his first international for England at the Home Nationals Tournament in April
The 2019 English Championships took place between 1st-3rd March. Pipers Vale had 12 gymnasts competing from both the girls’ and boys’ squad. All of the gymnasts performed well and enjoyed the experience. Highlights included Brodie Davis coming away with a bronze medal on high bar and Dominic Bigsby being awarded the bronze medal on vault.
Next weekend (14th-17th) welcomes the British Gymnastics Championships, the most prestigious event in the competition calendar, Pipers Vale have 11 gymnasts competing. Its hard for me to express the pride I feel as I am writing about the club, the gymnasts and the technical coaches, Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club have chosen The Hub, to support their club, this is without doubt, an honour and a privilege for me personally, and all at Team Hub, and an incredible opportunity for The Hub to play its small part of a potential Ipswich based Olympic Champion!
