Juniors Athletes attend development and selection camp in Manchester

39 juniors athletes from a number of UK clubs attended a recent 5-day training camp at the National Academy in Manchester.

The purpose of the camp was to begin the process of selecting a team that has the ability to perform well at the 2009 ETU Junior European Championships scheduled to be held in Sweden over the 28th to the 31st May.

The camp supplied an opportunity for the coaching staff and members of the high performance support team to assess and study the technical level of some of the best Juniors in Britain at the moment.

Paul Green and Stephen Jennings commented ‘ The camp has been a very productive assessment exercise, the previous Junior Team we took to the Junior Europeans in 2007 topped the medal table in the men’s divisions and the team came in second place overall, this offers a significant challenge for this group of players a challenge which I am sure they will relish.

The players trained twice per day and were treated to educational sessions from the national team psychologist Sarah Broadhead alongside a special motivational session from Great Britain’s most successful Taekwondo athlete Sarah Stevenson. Sarah reflected on the challenges she faced as a junior athlete pursuing the dream of Olympic medal success.

Selected junior athletes will be invited to the next development camp following the German Open Championships in April.