Transatlantic football collaborations supporting athlete and student development
Close collaborations with elite soccer clubs in the United States are giving staff and students at Teesside University the opportunity to work alongside professional footballers supporting their training and development.
L-R: Professor Paul Chesterton, Luke Jenkinson and Dr Matthew Wright at D.C. United
Sports and exercise staff from the University’s School of Health & Life Sciences recently visited the United States where they helped forge relationships with two Major League Soccer (MLS) clubs, Colorado Rapids and D.C. United.
The collaborations follow the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with David Beckham-owned MLS side Inter Miami CFwhose Higher Performance Director, Dr Garrison Draper, is a former PhD student at Teesside University.
In addition, the growing relationship between Teesside University and professional football in the United States has seen two students from the University of Miami visit Middlesbrough to spend time within Teesside University’s biomechanics department and also work with players and staff at Middlesbrough FC.
This visit will be reciprocated next year with students from Teesside University being given the opportunity to visit the United States.
Each of the partnerships heralds a multitude of opportunities for student placements and internships, staff development and joint research projects.
Professor Paul Chesterton travelled to America alongside colleague Dr Matt Wright where they spent three days in Washington DC, visiting the D.C. United training ground and meeting medical and performance staff in addition to first team coaching staff.
They then spent a further three days at Colorado Rapids in Denver where they met various staff from across the club including front office, first team coaching, medical and performance staff.
At both clubs, they were invited to watch training and first team games and presented work from their own research and discussed how it could be translated to North American Soccer.
They also met with Teesside University PhD students Luke Jenkinson and Kyle Porter, who are respectively working at D.C. United and Colorado Rapids while studying their doctorates.
A lot of the work we’ve been doing in America has been research based, but it transcends into a lot of our different portfolios and feeds into our learning and teaching strategy.
Professor Chesterton said: “A lot of the work we’ve been doing in America has been research based, but it transcends into a lot of our different portfolios and feeds into our learning and teaching strategy.
“We’ve developed a really intense opportunity for our students to be directly involved in our research in MLS football and have practitioners from the US talk directly within our modules and use real-world data to give each student an opportunity to benefit from the partnership.”
Dr Wright added: “From a research perspective, the trip to America has been really exciting.
“The impact of factors like playing at altitude, the high temperatures and long travel times are not necessarily things that happen in European football.
“So, it’s really interesting to look at how those challenges are faced and overcome.”
Kyle Porter, First Team Strength and Conditioning Coach at Colorado Rapids, said: “I knew I wanted to do a PhD and had an idea of what I wanted to do but didn’t know how I would be able to implement it.
“After meeting staff at Teesside University, and seeing how I would be able to practically apply all the things I researched, it clicked and seemed like a really good opportunity.”
Luke Jenkinson, High-performance Director at D.C. United, said: “The relationships with tutors have been the most important part of my decision to conduct research with Teesside University.
“Too often in high-performance sport you can operate in a vacuum, but having this relationship with Teesside University keeps me accountable and makes sure that everything we do on a day-to-day basis is informed by research and evidence based.
“I’m looking forward to going through this journey and making an impact on our world.”
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