Sam Drew

Hi, I’m Sam and I’m in the second year of my BSc Sports Coaching degree at Hartpury University.

Hartpury cares about athletes

I chose Hartpury because of the facilities on offer. When looking at Hartpury, you can clearly see how much they care about and support their students. They help you to reach your potential, and then push you to reach the next level you thought you couldn’t get to.

My course suits me perfectly. The timetable for my degree works with my Sport Academy rugby training, which is really important to me and something Hartpury works hard to do.

When looking at the rugby set up at Hartpury, I could see I was going to get the best coaching possible. Matches are Wednesday afternoons. Because of this, I have no lectures on a Wednesday, which allows me to focus on the match.

A day on my course

I love the hands on approach. In my lectures, I’m able to coach as much as possible, which will be really beneficial in the future. The more experience I get, the better.

A typical day for me starts at 7am. I do an hour’s rugby training and we’re usually done and dusted by 10am. Then it’s on to my lectures.

Each day is different, which I love. I enjoy my Coaching Children module. This allows me to create sessions each week, get feedback on those sessions and then gain experience of coaching primary-age children.

Practical sessions help me improve as a coach

I currently have four hours of practical sessions per week. This practical side of modules is key to my improvement as a coach.

The sessions tend to be two hours long and include writing a session plan, coaching and gaining feedback. This is super important for my improvement, as it allows me to understand how my participants felt the session went and where I can improve.

When I’m not coaching I’m a participant. This also helps because I can gain experience, take information from it, and use it for my own sessions. I’m gaining experience all the time and each week I’m improving as a coach.

Hartpury during Covid-19

Even with Covid-19, Hartpury made sure that the level of learning never dipped. Practicals started as soon as the government allowed it, with hand sanitisers around the sports hall and fire doors kept open to allow air to flow. Lectures made sure that we got as much coaching in as possible.

During lockdown, the online learning was really helpful. Lectures were quick at responding to any emails and the online seminars/lectures were very interactive. This allowed us to engage with the session and get as much out of it as we could. Along with this, I could watch back any lecture I felt I needed to and again, this helped loads, as it meant I could watch it when I could.

I met friends from day one

For me, the way I’ve made friends is by throwing myself in as much as possible. As soon as I started rugby, I made friends instantly. I enjoy playing all sports, including rugby, football and cricket. The Sports Academy at Hartpury helped me settle in so quickly. Because of this, I met friends from day one and made me feel happy with being at Hartpury, during my first week.

Gaining experience to become a lecturer

For the future, I’m looking at becoming a university lecturer. Hartpury is helping me achieve this by allowing me to teach as much as possible.

When I go into my third year next year, I’m hoping to help teach the first-year students. This is great for me, as it allows me to gain the experience of teaching a university student.

Along with this, my personal academic tutor arranged a 1-2-1 meeting with me to discuss my pathway. This helped a lot. Now I can see exactly what I need to do to achieve my goal and I feel like I have the support from my module leader to succeed.

Hear from Sam
Listen to our podcast with Sam to hear what it’s like to study BSc Sports Coaching at Hartpury University. The applied learning and coaching experience is preparing him for a future career as a university lecturer, a calling he’s discovered since studying at Hartpury.