Ulster Badminton

Dear Member

I hope you and those closest to you are safe and well at this time. I also hope you are dealing with the changes that we are all experiencing as best as possible. On behalf of Ulster Badminton I just wanted to get in touch to wish you all well and to highlight some of the things that are currently going on, and some of our plans for the coming weeks and months.

As a staff we are continuing to work as best as we can, Emma, Andy, Les and myself are all working from home and are available to chat to you if required. Obviously, we are not sure when badminton activities as we knew them will resume but we are trying to engage with members as best as possible through our social media accounts and our website. If you are not already connected with us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram please connect with these pages as we will continue to add weekly content that we hope you find useful and enjoyable. For those of you involved in coaching we have also created a new private coaches group on Facebook so if you are interested in joining this please drop me an email to ryanprentice@ulsterbadminton.com and I will send you an invitation.

Each week we are adding some short skills videos to our social media pages and Andy Stewart is also delivering a live coaching session each week on Facebook. These sessions are also stored on the page for you to visit if you can’t make the live session. These sessions have had a terrific response in terms of the numbers viewing and the comments afterwards so I would encourage you to check them out. Information on the sessions each week will be posted on social media so please ensure you keep an eye out so you can get involved.

Some of you may be aware we also have our own You Tube channel with lots of content already uploaded and over the next few weeks we will be adding more content to this channel so again please check it out. Hopefully it helps with a little bit of the badminton fix.

Over the next month or two we plan on creating more online content utilising people inside and outside of the organisation. We hope to be able to provide content that is interesting and beneficial for players, coaches, parents and those involved in organising clubs. With this in mind if you have any ideas on things you would like to see or support you would like please drop me an email. Again, we will post updates on this on our social media channels so again please ensure you connect with us.

Sport Northern Ireland have also launched a Sports Wellbeing Hub that contains numerous resources that you might find interesting. The link is below so please check it out.

www.inspiresupporthub.org/sports

As a club you may also want to start thinking ahead to when you are able to start back and measures you would like to put in place to support your club. Whether this is aims and objectives, club development plans, Clubmark, growing club numbers, training more coaches, creating a club coaching programme or anything else you feel would benefit your club we would love to hear from you and to help you with this. Over the last number of year’s we have helped many clubs in the areas mentioned and other areas and we would love to use some of our time now to help you prepare for when we can get back on court.

It is important at this time that we all remain engaged with each other, our family, our friends, our fellow club members and I would encourage all clubs either through their committees or other members to be keeping in touch with your members. Whether it is weekly phone calls, emails, social media or creating a club what’s app group to allow members to stay in touch with one another at this strange time. We know how important our sports clubs are socially for everyone and it is important for club members to try and remain in touch during this time to support each other to get through this. As a governing body we will continue to send out weekly emails to all club secretaries and we are available for a chat with any club or member. All staff contacts are below so please feel free to give us a call, or send an email or message and we can arrange to call you back.

Obviously both governments have set out their steps for lifting the COVID-19 restrictions and as we move through these steps and things become a little clearer in terms of timescales we will post more information and guidance for clubs and members.

Club and Coaching Officer

Ryan Prentice                 Tel: 07894507435           Email: ryanprentice@ulsterbadminton.com

Business Development Officer

Andrew Stewart              Tel: 07963303007           Email: andrewstewart@ulsterbadminton.com

Para High Performance Coach

Leslie Dewart                   Tel: 0736514029           Email: lesliedewart@ulsterbadminton.com

Branch Administrator

Emma Nesbitt                 Tel: 07496054964           Email: emmanesbitt@ulsterbadminton.com

Social Media Accounts

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/UlsterBadminton/

Twitter – https://twitter.com/UlsterBadders

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ulsterbadders/         

I am sure like many other sports, some of our members are working at this time as key workers and we thank you so much for your dedication and commitment to helping us get through this pandemic and we wish you and your families our gratitude and our sincere thanks. We would love to recognise any key workers that are a member of one of our clubs so please get in touch if you would like to highlight the amazing work going on by a member or members of your club in helping us get through the current situation.

Finally, on behalf of Ulster Badminton I wish you well and hope you and those closest to you continue to stay safe and I look forward to hopefully chatting with some of you over the weeks ahead.

Take care and please stay safe.

 Ryan Prentice

Club and Coaching Officer