Congratulations to the following, people who will be running the GB Junior Programme during 2011-12.  Thanks to everyone that applied to support the teams - we received more applications than ever this year.

• Junior Open: Manager: Joe Wyatt, Coach: Jools Murray
• Junior Women: Manager: Gemma Taylor, Coach: Jon Pugh
• U17 Open: Manager: Andy Vaughan, Coaches: Jolyon Thompson, Tom Candlin
• U17 Girls: Manager: Chris Flight, Coaches: Tom Howard, Philippa Sturt

UK Ultimate has also employed Ruth Flight on a part-time basis to the role of GB Junior Programme Manager.The team willl still be hoping to involve more coaches - especially at UK-based training sessions - and everyone that offered their help should have received an email to this effect by now.  If not, please get in touch.

We are also still very happy to receive applications from any individuals that would like to help out as assistant coaches.

UKU is starting the process of building a Coach Development programme around the Great Britain Ultimate set up to alongside the Coaching qualifications scheme.  The intention is to do things like:

• Involve more people in the UK-based training sessions with increased emphasis on coordinating the information that we are giving to athletes
• Run regionally-based training sessions for sub-groups of the squads to reduce costs for the athletes (and their parents)
• Make subsidised training (UKU coaching courses, Safeguarding courses, first-aid, and others) available to people that are volunteering within the GB Programme
• Improve our succession planning so that we don’t have big losses of knowledge and experience when people inevitably have to reduce the amount of time they can volunteer to projects like this

Furthermore – whilst we are starting this programme at the Junior level – we are also doing some work with the Senior teams to bring them closer together too.  In time we intend to join all these areas up and have a GB Elite Ultimate Programme running across U17, U20, U23 and the senior squads.