News

Posted: Monday 24th August 2020

Scholarship Players and coaches hard at work!

Take a look at how the club’s scholarship setup have been developing and keeping fit throughout lockdown.

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Since the suspension of all scholarship-level training and games in mid-March, the club would like to take this opportunity to recognise the efforts that have been taken by all players and coaches at this level to adapt and build for future seasons.

Throughout lockdown, all scholarship players have made the most of the opportunity to train and stay on top of their game thanks to Strength and Conditioning Coach Callum Bethel, who has helped lead running and home-based gym sessions throughout this difficult period. Also vital in this aspect was the work of Reece Carr who held regular Yoga and Pilates classes via video as part of a rounded performance training regime.

Elsewhere, Scholarship Coaches Richard Humphries and Richard Leese selflessly dedicated their time to help individual players work on their own skillsets and also to run video analysis sessions remotely alongside Tigers’ first team players Liam Watts, James Clare, Peter Mata’utia, and Jesse Sene-Lafeo.

The club also welcomes coaches Steve Copley, Richard Garbett, and Mental Skills Coach Keith Sloan to the scholarship setup ahead of next years’ programme.

Away from the performance side, the players have continued their off-field professional development thanks to nutrition education and cooking tasks provided by students from Leeds Beckett University, as well as improving their speaking and self-reflection skills while working on club heritage tasks led by Scholarship Team Manager Brian Stanley.

Head of Youth Performance Darren Higgins praised players and coaches alike for their work at this unprecedented time: “The scholarship players have been an absolute credit to themselves and the club during the last 4 – 5 months and have kept their foot on the pedal as their journey as aspiring professional players has continued.

This process has been led exceptionally well by our scholarship volunteer workforce who have gone above and beyond in order to provide provision for the players in these challenging circumstances. The commitment and dedication to our young players by these staff members has been truly outstanding and is something we are truly appreciative of. In addition to this Steve Armitage has been working incredibly hard and doing a fantastic job behind the scenes with the recruitment side of programme on the back of 18 months hard work by him and our talent identification scouts.”