Laurea in Scienze dello Sport (con lode) in Coaching Sportivo

• Make the most of excellent sports facilities, including a sport and exercise psychology laboratory and technologies for sports analysis
  • Enrich your university experience with a wide range of extracurricular opportunities, from traditional Sports Coach UK workshops to cutting-edge performance and professional courses that include the highly sought-after Certificate in Coaching Multi-Skills Development in Sport qualification.
  • Receive first aid and safeguarding training, as well as Disclosure and Barring Service clearance prior to your placement, as part of the course
  • Learn to reflect in an analytical way on your practical experience of coaching
  • Undertake a community coaching placement in a sports club, leisure centre, or school in Year 2
  • Be the difference – develop our future athletes

Sports coaches used to pick up their skills simply by playing and then passing on their experience. But that’s no longer enough in a world where coaches in tennis, football and cricket have public profiles as high as the players themselves. We now expect coaches to have studied and mastered the art and science of coaching. That’s why in our Sports Coaching course you learn a more ‘professional’ approach by reflecting in an academic way on your practical experiences of coaching practice.

From the minute you leave our three-year programme’s ‘starting blocks’ you won’t be short of inspiration. Our lecturers are great motivators of students and the facilities available to you are first-class, including our own stadium complete with an eight-lane athletics track, a large sports hall on-campus and laboratories kitted out with the latest high-tech analysis equipment. You also benefit from the professional input of a range of interesting motivational speakers. In the past, these have included coaches from the Welsh national football team, a member of Chelsea FC, and rugby union players from Saracens.

Central to the Sport Coaching course at Winchester is the belief that theory and knowledge are best learned through practice. Four strands cover both the practical and academic elements.

The first strand is Sports Coaching Practice, which teaches you to put theoretical coaching principles into practice to help sports people strive to improve performance. Part of being a successful coach is having good communication skills and we study the best ways to convey your message. In this practical first strand, you may also explore coaching consultancy work in the local sporting community to enhance your employment prospects.

The Supporting Coaching Practice strand helps you to understand both scientific and sociological coaching principles. You focus on how inequality affects both coaching and sports participation and how the sport is used to develop local communities. You take a deeper look at training methodology and the use of technology, such as video match analysis. You also focus on educational theory and how it can help structure coaching classes. Finally, you explore coaching special populations, with the primary focus on disability sports.

The Sports Coaching Science strand applies sports science to sports coaching. Covering aspects of biomechanics, physiology and psychology provides you with a science toolkit for coaching.

Finally, in the Research Methods strand, you develop the academic ability to apply both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to various sporting and exercise contexts. The acquisition of such skills underpins your learning in all strands and is essential for completing the dissertation in an area of special interest.

Our degree equips you with the coaching expertise to join a growing industry where standards have risen dramatically in recent years. Our graduates usually enter careers as professional sports coaches, sports development officers, performance managers, community development leaders and PE teachers. But you ‘cross the finishing line’ with a wide range of transferable communication, analysis and research skills that are also valued in a range of careers not directly related to sport and fitness.

The University of Winchester empowers students to reach their full potential and make a difference in the world. Set in Winchester, a beautiful, quintessential English city with a rich heritage and vibrant contemporary culture, the university’s friendly and compact campuses give students the benefit of city and campus living. We are well situated with excellent transport links allowing you to reach London or the coast in an hour, and Southampton Airport is just a 10-minute train journey away.

The university offers a selection of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees that are taught across our five faculties:

• Faculty of Business and Digital Technologies: A modern, forward-thinking faculty offering a range of disciples including Accounting, Economics, Business Management, Computer Science and Marketing.
• Faculty of Education and the Arts: Has a long and established history of providing high-quality degrees, and is home to the Institute of Education, Department of Education and Childhood Studies, Department of Performing Arts, and School of Media and Film.
• Faculty of Health and Wellbeing: Outstanding degrees that are committed to progressing health and well-being for all life. The faculty includes Nursing, Physiotherapy, Social Work, Animal Welfare and Sports degrees.
• Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences: Passionate about what makes us human, we offer research-led teaching and outstanding support in Anthropology; Archaeology; History; Psychology; Social Sciences including Politics and Geography; Philosophy; English and Creative Writing.
• Faculty of Law, Crime and Justice: Bringing together the department of Law and the department of Policing, Criminology and Forensics, the faculty uses an interdisciplinary approach to offer a dynamic range of degrees that offer the use of specialist facilities.