Becoming a performance analyst: autoethnographic reflections on agency, and facilitated transformational growth

This paper features an autoethnographic approach in presenting and reflecting upon the story of one higher education student’s rapid vocational and academic transformation. Initially an inconspicuous undergraduate student, Andrew experienced an accelerated development that catapulted him to working in elite sport performance analysis (PA) environments, within a year. PA is a sub-discipline of sports coaching that involves using the latest technological advances to influence sporting performance, through the objective analysis of performance data. This autoethnographic piece is partly Andrew’s personal reflection upon that journey towards his newfound profession, which initially grew out of his experience of a generic sports degree at a university. Through stepping out of his comfort zone, and analysing sports previously unknown to him, extraordinary progress was made, and various vocational and academic opportunities arose. The initial catalyst for this developmental journey was facilitated by coaching lecturer David, who reflects upon how Andrew’s story links to his own educational philosophies. Andrew and David explore what these stories might mean to them personally, including potential links to the metaphor of learning as becoming, and notions around the concepts of learner agency, and educational facilitation. The paper ends by exploring the theoretical frameworks that guided this paper’s structure and focus.

Andrew's story I open my GCSE results. A letter C adjacent to Science confronts me. My (as yet unknown) journey to becoming an elite performance analyst nearly ends before it begins. I require a B or better to gain entry to A-Level PE. I am offered French or Design Technology instead, but have no interest in these. Much persuasion, and support from my family, later, I am given permission to undertake the PE course. Now I have something to prove to a school and teachers who claimed I would fail. Earlier the same year I was encouraged to have extra maths tuition, having been warned that I would fail that GCSE too, but, I comfortably achieved a B. Subsequently, I prove them wrong again, in that instead of scraping along the bottom of the A-Level PE class as predicted, I end up a whisker away from an A. An acceptance letter for a Sports Studies BSc programme at Hertfordshire University drops on my doorstep.
My rationale for choosing the course is simplemy life revolves around playing and watching sport. I play badminton for my school and county, and to this day hold a Leicester City FC season ticket (someone has to, right?!). However, my reasoning was questioned frequently by sceptical others. For example, my long-term girlfriend also independently chooses Hertfordshire University, as it is the only place to do her preferred course in the country, but we are perceived to have selected the same university for non-academic reasons. This makes me determined to prove a point again. I arrive at Hertfordshire on my first day knowing no one else, and a new journey begins. I quickly find myself in a group of five new friends. We stay together as a group throughout, supporting and helping each other along the way. By the end of the course, three of the group graduate with jobs in PA at an elite level.
My first year is nothing special. I am a middle of the road student, although well above the bare pass level that many of my peers seem content with. Second year rolls around, and a guest lecture on PA from a final year student who works as a performance analyst at a professional football club. A Catherine wheel of ideas is ignited, and spirals through my mind as a result. Do they do this in badminton? Could I combine my love for sport and photography together? (I completed GCSE and A-Level photography, and worked as an events photographer for two years). I am able to tap into opportunities to learn the basics of PA, and soon I am well and truly out of my comfort zone, at a Hertfordshire Mavericks netball match. I am there with another student (one of our group of five) from my course. We film the game, and attempt to code some centre passes and goals. That is about the limit to our netball knowledge at this stage. Something makes us want to go back, and we carry on until the end of that season.
Before long I am busy accumulating as much PA experience as I can. I find myself in a five-star hotel in Birmingham, with the England Badminton team, chatting and having breakfast with one of the country's best-known players. I am here, fully kitted out, as an assistant performance analyst, in my own sport. I fulfil the same role the next year, when a new head analyst is in charge. He, and the performance director of England Badminton, invites me to work more with the national squad in the lead up to the 2012 London Olympics. I end up travelling to Badminton England HQ at Milton Keynes twice a week as an England Badminton performance analyst. Other PA experiences come and go, some good, some bad. Eventually, I am standing delivering a guest lecture to students on PA, 12 months on from when someone was doing the very same to me. I hope that I too can inspire others to follow my path.
A new coach starts at Hertfordshire Mavericks, and I choose to go back and be more involved. I attend every game home and away (including long coach trips to Newcastle or Manchester and back in a day) and am proud to be part of the team. I learn the rules, some tactics and the vernacular. A chance meeting at a game introduces me to the England Netball analyst, and editor of an industry journalwe exchange contact details. I am now still cramming in as much PA experience as I can manage in and around my university studies, studies which include writing a dissertation examining if PA could be used in badminton to a greater extent, and creating a unique embryonic system for PA in the sport. It attains the magical 70% line (first class equivalent. In fact, I ultimately end up with a first class degree classification overall), and is later published in the International Journal of Performance Analysis, thanks in part to that chance meeting with the editor, who encourages a submission. By this time I am in addition working at the Lee Valley white water centre during the 2012 Games as part of a technical video team providing live video feeds to the competing nations' analysts. Whilst there, I receive a phone call from the head coach of the England Netball team, asking me to consider being their analyst. I accept and will be working on a home series against Jamaica, and then on tour in Australia and New Zealand. Suddenly that work with Hertfordshire Mavericks has paid off (both metaphorically and literally, as I am awarded a scholarship for my work with them). Two weeks later I am sitting in the Olympic Stadium as a performance analyst for ParalympicsGB. Fast forward to November and I am sat on a plane in Auckland, about to return home after an amazing six-week tour with the England Netball team.
It is 5 am on a cold frosty morning three days later, and I am still feeling jetlagged and groggy (my body clock is all over the place). 'This train will call at all stations to Cardiff'. Couldn't they miss a few out? Four hours later I arrive to be interviewed for a doctorate in PA. No sooner had I embarked on the long journey back to Hertfordshire than I get the call to say I have been selected to be England Netball and Cardiff Metropolitan University's (fully funded) performance analyst and PhD student. I am delighted and apprehensive at the same time.
And so, as the music reverberates, I walk down the central aisle of St Albans Abbey as part of the academic procession at my Sports Studies BSc (Hons) graduation (I am now also a member of staff at Hertfordshire University, as a paid Performance Analyst). I take my seat on stage next to my lecturers, and look out to see the beaming smiles of my proud parents in the third row. Then it hits me. Three years ago I did not even know what PA was. Now I am here, I think back to opening those GCSE results; smiling to myself at those teachers who told me I would fail (they soon get wind of my achievements, and are suddenly keen to associate me with the school, and advertise my success on the website). I proudly shake the hand of the Vice Chancellor and return to my seat. Only at this point do I realise how far I have come, but more importantly how far I have to go. My journey as a performance analyst is only just beginning. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning. (Winston Churchill, 1942) David's story I stumble in to a hot and packed lecture theatre 10 minutes after the session is officially due to start. A bag of balls in one hand, laptop in another, and a guest national coach in tow. Due to the vagaries of the university timetabling system we have negotiated a mad dash through the winter darkness, and the growing rush hour, from one site to another in order to transition between a coaching practical and a delayed start theory based lecture, on a second year Applied Sports Coaching module. As I wrestle the cables and connections of the audio visual system, I quickly scan the room and take in those faces conspicuously absent from the preceding practical, and the more flushed features of those committed enough to attend both, as they hurriedly take their seats. I briefly remind our national coach about the remit for the presentation part of her input to the module, and load up her materials on the computer. As I do so I glance across to the side of the room, and spot my third year student who is going to speak for the second half of the session. He is reading through his notes nervously, and looks up with a cautious smile.
It is about eight weeks into the first term of another hectic academic year (my 25th as an educator). A precious interlude between the madness of getting everything up and running effectively on the Sports Studies degree (which I am Programme Tutor for), and the imminent battle with daunting piles of marking which will soon arrive. As module leader I have already covered a lot of theoretical content, mostly related to aspects of periodisation, and I have now arranged for guest speakers in an attempt to bring alive for students how these issues are implemented in real world practice. Ever vigilant for possible win-win situations, and setting up virtuous cycles, I have one of my third year students delivering on how he has used PA in his own coaching related practice. This will help him complete required coach education hours for the Advanced Sports Coaching module which he is undertaking, and may open second year students' eyes to the possibilities of PA, both in terms of theoretical applications to periodisation, and the possible types of work related experiences that they might undertake themselves.
I was initially employed by the university to put together the degree, and was keen from the outset to design a structure and philosophy that might encourage the development of balanced thinkers and doers. I wanted to produce graduates who were independent and autonomous, self-motivated and had learned how to learn. Individuals who had been empowered and facilitated to make their own luck; to identify and grasp opportunities, and to leverage more learning out of their experiences. Persons who had come to know themselves well, and to appreciate their own specialised areas of interest. From the very first cohort, several students responded well to this philosophy. In the initial year, one student approached a local professional football club and asked if he could do voluntary work in PA in order to gain experience; by the second year he was being paid for part-time PA work; by the third year he was one of the senior analysts, and after graduation became head analyst at the club. At the same time he undertook a PA related final year project, and gained a first class honours degree overall. He also delivered a session to second years on PA, and offered some opportunities and contacts for them to get involved if they wished to. Now, some years on, this tradition was well established, and a number of students on the course had achieved significant impacts in PA, both academically and vocationally.
The third year student managed to deliver a polished presentation (holding up surprisingly well as a follow up act to the national coach), with an impressive balance of theory and practice. I particularly liked his content on a day in the life of a performance analyst, and the details of his burgeoning CV, including work with national teams and performance sports clubs, which clearly caught the imagination of some students, particularly as his own journey as a performance analyst had only started after the corresponding guest lecture the year before. The brief message on his last slide summed things up nicelytake every opportunity. He rounded off by offering to discuss chances to get involved practically with individuals afterwards. As per most years, only a handful of students actually stayed, as the majority traipsed out. Some were merely curious about how they might write this up in theoretical assignments, or about related literature sources. But others were attracted by the possibility of gaining some hands-on experience. Andrew approached me as the presenter worked his way through a short queue of enquirers. 'I found this really interesting', he said, 'but, I've never heard of it being used in badminton, so I'm not sure how I would start?' Andrew seemed to be a solidly performing but unremarkable student. Pleasant enough though, in my experience, and clearly accomplished with regard to badminton coaching. 'Well, have a word with the speaker', I advised, 'you never know. If it's not used much in badminton yet, then you could be someone to help implement it!' Fast forward a year, and Andrew is himself taking the guest lecture on PA. As I watch the presentation it strikes me how incredibly far he has come in such a short space of time. First, his academic grades are now consistently excellent. Second, his accumulation of PA experience is extraordinary. Within the year he has worked with an Hertfordshire Mavericks, a Premier league women's' football team, a county cricket side, an Olympic sport and with the England Badminton team. As part of his presentation Andrew visually represents the Sports Studies community of practice that has now developed, showing an interlinked image that encompasses the students who have chosen to specialise in PA whilst on the course, and the various sporting contexts in which they have operated. Two critical questions occur to me arising from this. I wonder how it is that our students have generally had such success in this area, given that we do not actually even teach it on the course? We merely introduce them to the possibilities of PA, and provide links/contacts that can be followed up in order to gain experience if required. I also ask myself why it might be that Andrew in particular has made such spectacular progress, given that the initial opportunities available to him were merely the same, or similar to those available to all students?
Another year on and Andrew is about to graduate with a first class honours degree in Sports Studies. But even before he graduates we have managed to coauthor a published journal article based on his undergraduate dissertation in the an industry journal; he has gained full-time employment at the Hertfordshire Sports Village (an offset of the University of Hertfordshire), in a PA post that was effectively created for him from scratch, and he has secured a fully funded Doctorate place at a university specialising in PA. Furthermore, he is travelling internationally with England Netball as an analyst. Part of Andrew's job at Hertfordshire University actually involves creating more opportunities for students to get involved in PA, so the virtuous cycle seems set to continue. I see him one day while having an informal meeting at Hertfordshire Sports Village, and we shake hands and chat about various issues. He is wearing performance analyst branded matching kit, and it crosses my mind that over the last two years he has indeed transformed into a performance analyst at a personal level, deeper than just the clothing. PA seems to have become part of his life, and probably part of him. At the same time he has evolved rapidly from a student to a valued colleague. We have reflected together on this remarkable journey, and his accelerated development. 'I have an idea for our next paper', I say. 'We should share your inspiring story, and explore what it might mean. Have you ever heard of autoethnography?' Andrew's interpretationswhat does this mean to me? Having had the valuable opportunity to reflect upon and carefully consider my developmental journey thus far, I have arrived at two interpretations, which seem to me to interlink and interrelate. First, that I am now beginning to appreciate more fully the sum and significance of the formative experiences I have undertaken, and the resultant progress made personally and professionally, something I had never before entirely appreciated. Second, my own growing disappointment that many others do not sufficiently engage with similar opportunities in order to potentially accelerate their own growth.
Throughout my final two years at the University of Hertfordshire, it was frequently expressed to me, by others, that I had made excellent progress in the specialist field of PA, in such a short space of time. This positive feedback was obtained from both internal lecturers and tutors, and external practitioners associated with PA and coaching, indicating what was considered to be an atypical and surprising trajectory. However, from my own perspective, I was not initially mindful of this being particularly extraordinary, viewing my development instead as unremarkable, and based upon, what seemed to me, to be the common sense strategy of gaining extra experience outside of my degree programme.
Notwithstanding, the process of producing this paper has caused a reconsideration of the possible significance of my story. The reflection and associated awareness raising involved have facilitated an enhanced appreciation of the transformation experienced, and a sharpened focus in terms of concomitant sense making. Furthermore, the creation of a storied form has allowed a holistic connected representation of my developmental journey to emerge, which has allowed me to perhaps move beyond mere reflection to embrace reflexivity (a reflection upon reflections).
To remind the reader, two of my peers also left their degree programme to progress to job roles within PA, having grasped similar opportunities to those I engaged with. They are now all working at professional football clubs, which is gratifying to see, and a further positive endorsement of employability promoted by the course. Nonetheless, it could be considered that my developmental path appears to be more potent in comparison, and it therefore might be useful to consider why this might be.
I believe that this was a direct result of my immersion in many available practical experiences, arising from a mixture of provided and sought contacts. Hence, I proactively engaged with a variety of opportunities in different sporting contexts, which provided a breadth of growing knowledge, and the chance to network with a range of practitioners. Not only did this result in the opening of further doors and greater links, it also eventually led to a focused depth of engagement with specific PA settings, as I gradually discovered my own specialist interests and preferred niche areas. There was a parallel here with my degree programme in that it features a broad curriculum that progressively allows students the agency to engage with and focus upon specialist areas of choice.
It sincerely saddens me having witnessed several students, who in contrast to my own story, failed to fully grasp the developmental opportunities available to them. Of those there seemed to be two distinctive groups. The first being those intent on just getting through the degree, with little regard for actively discovering where their specialist areas lay, and thus also being somewhat vocationally unaware (with employment possibilities barely on their radar). As such, members of this group seemed to have a limited worldview, largely based on short-term concerns, such as the next assignment deadline. The second group featured an opposite imbalance, in that they were already greatly immersed in vocationally based practice at the expense of academic development, merely cruising the degree in order to simply gain a certificate.
As part of my current job role at Hertfordshire University, I am responsible for the recruitment and training of new budding performance analysts from the sports courses at the institution. Hence, I seem to have fully made the transition from being a student to becoming a facilitator of others, via providing opportunities to engage with PA experiences, and to discover if it is a vocation they would like to further pursue. Given that I now have a facilitator's perspective upon learning and becoming, I have come to recognise a personal frustration that I share with David's story above. That is, I perceive a form of unlearning and unbecoming as a result of students not sufficiently engaging with opportunities that could potentially transform them, and accelerate their developmental journeys. In conclusion, it consequently strikes me that with adequate application, desire and aspirations to succeed, anyone may begin their journey to finding their passion, and in my case, career path.

David's interpretationswhat might these stories mean?
As an educator I have found myself drawn to the metaphor of learning as becoming. When I reflect that there are still people struggling for the right to an education in some parts of the world, it genuinely saddens me to observe students who do not fully embrace their educational opportunities. One basic definition of learning I recall from my teacher training is a relatively permanent change in behaviour. However, some students do not seem willing to engage in the depth of learning that is required in order to promote meaningful personal growth and transformation. For me the highest form of learning is embodied in who we are and what we become in our interactions with a complex and dynamic world. This is perhaps best promoted by a blending of formal and experiential learning that effectively shapes our lives and constructs our selves, as well as promoting our further learning in response to inevitable on going change; an immersion in practice and study that essentially causes something altered and more agentic to emerge.
But what of my own becoming? I think I tend to encourage my students to make their own luck so strongly in part because I have not ultimately become fully what I wanted or intended to be. I now recognise that all I ever really wanted to do was to coach, and/or teach. But having survived so long in sport and education, and having been subject to the pressures of making a living, I have instead accumulated much responsibility, and become an educational administrator by default. I naively assumed that the job of being a lecturer in sports coaching would mostly be about coaching, teaching and some research. However, I find myself dealing with administration and bureaucracy for the majority of my time, while my interpersonal strengths seem woefully underplayed. At the same time, education has, for me, not moved in a direction that I would have desired, becoming commodified, exploited and depersonalised. 1 So, finding myself sidetracked, and the context shifting uncomfortably around me, mine has been something of a frustrating journey of unbecoming. Perhaps I need to become something different? To that end I am currently studying for an Educational Doctorate, and already feel somewhat changed and refreshed. Meantime, if I can make the occasional positive difference in helping others, such as Andrew, in their own journey of becoming, then that will be a rewarding consolation for now.
Andrew has become something of a standard bearer for my own educational philosophies and an inspiring benchmark setter. How did he do it? Well, in my opinion, his initial awareness of the possibilities of PA was provoked by that guest lecture, probably made all the more potent through being delivered by a peer student. Then through a mixture of grasping opportunities, determination, luck, and being willing to get out of his comfort zone, he provoked rapid growth. At the same time he was able to tailor his academic assessments as they had been deliberately flexibly designed in order to allow students to pursue areas of personal and/or professional interest. Finally, utilising his accumulated experiences, understandings and increasing engagements with communities of practice allowed him to cultivate a discriminating awareness about the areas of PA that might best fit his personal ambitions and interests. It has been a privilege to be a humble part of his developmental journey thus far. In recent communication with me he indicated that although he recognises that there is hard work and difficulty ahead, he looks forward to becoming an expert in PA, or at least the best analyst he can be.
When I speculate on that question of why quite a few of my past and present students have become accomplished in PA, I believe that it may be due to the multithematic nature of the Sports Studies degree programme, combined with a built in capacity for agency. Hence, they could benefit from an appreciation of the place and meaning of PA within a broad contextual and conceptual framework, while simultaneously being empowered to select and develop PA as an area of intended specialism, promoting ownership that fuels high achievement in this specific field. I am genuinely amused that some people have come to think that I am some sort of expert in PA these days (far from it!), given the success of students such as Andrew. I look forward to facilitating others in becoming beyond their current capabilities in the future, and certainly in eclipsing mine! I believe the root word for the term 'education' comes from the meaning to draw out. Thus, I have long used methods such as facilitative questioning and discussion to help students to uncover and appreciate what they actually already know, or have some grasp of. But perhaps this notion could be extended further, to consider how we as educators may help others to draw out and link to exactly what their own specific interests are, and what and who they might choose to become as a result of tapping in to revealed possibilities and passions?
... learning is a process of becoming. Learning cultures, and the vocational cultures in which they are steeped, transform those who enter them. (Colley, James, Tedder, & Diment, 2003, p. 471) Theoretical frameworks We would like to end by considering some of the theoretical frameworks and concepts that guided our choices of approach and focus in this paper. First, it is worth clarifying that our shared method has, we believe, been derived largely from our experiences together as student and lecturer within a particular Higher Education setting. For example, since the employment of critical reflective practice is encouraged and embedded within the coaching theme of the degree which we were involved in, we both tend to value this as productive means to leverage more learning from our experiences. In the sports coaching domain (of which PA is a component part) the work of Schön (1983Schön ( , 1987 has frequently been drawn upon to conceptualise the coach as a reflective practitioner, with several studies featuring the application of reflective practice in coaching contexts (e.g. Knowles, Tyler, Gilbourne, & Eubank, 2006). However, in the latter stages of the degree programme we additionally embraced a reflexive stance, seeming to encompass something distinct from, and beyond the scope of, reflection alone.
While there are many types of reflexivities (Lynch, 2000), reflexion seems to generally involve a significant element of critical introspection, a profound examination within oneself (Finlay & Gough, 2003a), and a type of meta reflection (a reflection upon reflection), to draw upon Moss and Barnes' (2008) helpful description, to not merely notice what we noticed, but also to notice how and why we noticed it. Here we would also propose a link to Mason's discipline of noticing (2002), an influential contribution to the metaphor of the sports coach as orchestrator (Jones, Bailey, & Thompson, 2012), recently developed to account for how coaches deal with ambiguity and complexity inherent in their domain. According to Mason (2002), noticing implies a sensitised attention to subtleties, a seeing beyond the obvious, in order to better recognise opportunities to act or learn (this seems akin to reflexivity to us). Hence, we find reflexivity a useful means by which to bring matters to light, enhance our awareness of influences and assumptions, and promote greater personal growth, albeit always via an inevitably partial self-view or uncovering (Riach, 2009). Pillow (2010) cautioned that reflexivity is no easy matter, since it may involve confronting shortcomings, struggles for self-determination, and evolving selves. Notwithstanding, reflexivity is thought to be capable of inducing a form of transformative journey (Shaw, 2013), involving powerful learning via the internal reframing of experiences and perspectives, not least because we may become more aware of being aware (Finlay & Gough, 2003a). Finlay and Gough (2003b) asserted that this thinking again critically also represents an opportunity to strengthen the trustworthiness and integrity of situated qualitative accounts, such as that presented in this paper. In accordance with Glesne and Peshkin (1992), we view reflexivity as a means through which to strive to become better researchers, and to provoke a greater depth of learning, through an ongoing awareness raising self-dialogue, whilst acknowledging firmly that this process can never be fully mastered. One such way of evaluating the self is through the medium of autoethnography.
Autoethnography may be considered a form of narrative inquiry, drawing upon the power of story, and promoting understanding through the portrayal and sharing of lived experiences (Ellis, 2004;Ellis & Bochner, 2000), related to a particular cultural setting (e.g. Purdy, Potrac, & Jones, 2008). Hence, Etherington (2004) claimed that to recount our tales is to potentially re-evaluate or alter ourselves, Bruner (1986) observed that humans may be viewed as storied beings, and Gill (1988, p. 83) claimed that 'We all live by stories. They give context and substance to the vitality of the meaning we find in life'. Consequently, the potency of story as a representative form may help to organise knowledge and promote understanding (Biesta, Goodson, Tedder, & Adair, 2008). In this regard, Connelly and Clandinin (1990) asserted that research might usefully entail the reconstruction of storied human lives as a powerful means of communication, and the provoking of thought about related issues. Henceforth, we adhere to the belief that stories may help people to obtain a grasp of messy realities (Bowes & Jones, 2006), presenting a holistic connected representation of experience, which may in turn be readily accessible and inherently appealing to practitioners (Douglas & Carless, 2008). We would also contend that stories can feature an authenticity or verisimilitude.
While Ng and Tan (2009) highlighted that teachers often trade stories in making sense of the problems encountered, they asserted this was largely limited to a fine tuning of pre-existing knowledge, and involved merely technical-rational levels of reflection.
However, our intention was to present intertwined stories, in order to sense make and learn from interwoven perspectives that might, in an emergent sense, become more than the sum of their reflective parts. We subsequently found the writing and interrelation of our stories to be a powerful process that allowed us to reconsider together our experiences, ourselves and how we have come to be the way we are. We were able to reorganise our thoughts about our developmental journeys, our practice, and possible links to theory. With regard to the latter, we sense resonances with Bourdieu's Field Theory (Maton, 2008) (particularly the interplay of field and habitus, whereby one can feel like a fish in water, or suffer a sense of disconnection known as hysteresis); Deweyan embodied construction (Hagar & Hodkinson, 2009) (that learning involves the interrelationship of the cognitive, physical, emotional and practical, in continuous interaction with the environment); and Carl Rogers' ideas around facilitative education and readiness to learn (Rogers, 1969) (which match our thoughts about the need to work with rather than do to HE students). However, we do not seek to expand upon these ideas here. One strength of autoethnography is the ability of the reader to take different meanings from the story, in connecting to their own thoughts and experiences. Therefore, we feel it is important to leave space for the reader to make their own connections, and draw their own inspirations in potentially informing understanding of personal developmental journeys and promoting possible flourishing.

Notes on contributors
Andrew D Butterworth is an elite performance analyst currently undertaking a doctorate in PA to compliment his practical knowledge with theoretical nous. Having worked with several national teams and high-level domestic teams, he has gained a large portfolio of experience that he is now applying and building upon to provide first-class analysis support.
David J Turner is a principal lecturer in Sports Coaching at the University of Hertfordshire. He has been a sports coach and an educationalist for 30 years, and a coach educator for 20 years, and is currently studying an educational doctorate on the long-term developmental journeys of expert-like sports coaches.