Into Sport Group and England Netball: Delivering a World Class Development Pathway
The Challenge and the Brief
England Netball has a clear goal to be the number one ranked team in the world. To achieve this aim, the organisation understands the need for a professional and focussed approach towards the development and management of athletes from the beginning of the performance pathway through to the senior national team.
England Netball’s Excel Pathway was conceived and implemented to help developing athletes reach their potential and form the foundation of future England squads. The programme runs throughout all nine England Netball regions and comprises of hundreds of players, coaches and specialists as well as a national management and coaching team.
With many athletes still in full time education, and based in locations throughout the country, England Netball face the ongoing challenge of limited contact time between coaches and athletes. In addition to this, for the programme to be managed effectively, they need to record training data for programme management, development and analysis.
Coaches and administrators need to be able to share information with the wider coaching team quickly and easily and they need to be able to communicate with individuals, groups, teams and whole squads. Coaches and athletes also need the ability to set goals, provide feedback, manage training programmes and record fitness and injury reports. With so much important information to capture and share, and a large group of athletes to coordinate, spreadsheets and documents soon became a too time consuming to administer, share and maintain.
Ultimately, England Netball recognised the need to enhance the Excel programme by supporting long term athlete development, allowing information and vital performance data to be easily analysed, shared and assessed by coaches, specialists and the national management team.
The Solution
Into Sport Group delivered a comprehensive online athlete management and collaboration solution using the PERFORMANCE module from its groundbreaking Vanquish platform.
The platform uses cloud based technology and is accessible through any internet browser, allowing simple and secure access to essential training data, whilst also providing a hub for communication and collaboration.
Vanquish allows England Netball’s regional and national coaches and athletes to communicate and manage training more efficiently, with real time data available to key staff at the touch of a button. The platform generates a range of standard and bespoke reports, from specific shooting percentages of certain players to a comprehensive performance overview for the national management team and chief executive.
This innovation means that England Netball’s Regional and National Excel Coaches can now gain more insight into the daily activities of their athletes, including training, nutrition and injury rehabilitation- thus maximising their time spent with athletes at training sessions and camps.
Ultimately, Vanquish helps England Netball’s Excel coaches and staff to collate and review essential performance data whist maximising face to face time with athletes. The implementation has also encouraged a different approach to knowledge sharing and communication, moving away from emails into one central location to help improve levels of performance and efficiency throughout the Excel performance pathway programme.
“It’s vital for us to keep track of athlete development and to be able to access and share key information quickly and easily with other coaching staff and specialists. Vanquish does all of this and its incredibly easy to use. Into Sport Group is helping England Netball to take a major step forward in the way our development and performance programmes are managed.”
Jan Crabtree, National Excel Head Coach, England Netball
