Ambassadors
Ambassadors are persons who are, or have been, active within the club and have experience with a dual career or with facing difficult transitions. They have experience combining study / work and sports or have learned to deal with certain challenges that occur during dual careers, such as an injury, de-selection or living on your own for the first time. This experience can be particularly useful for the club’s young athletes. It also contributes to more connection within the club. The challenge in this contact is that it is not only about sport, but that the coaching also has a holistic approach.
This could for example be a player of the first team. A person who has an interest in helping younger players or giving advice. They are good with younger athletes and like to help them with possible struggles. Besides that, they are also eager for the opportunity to learn some things themselves from participating in this role.
What do ambassadors need to know?
The club’s dual career vision / philosophy.
Their value to younger players and to the whole programme. They could be an example or a form of best practice.
That being an ambassador could be an opportunity for themselves too, as they can gain experience in sharing experiences and for example one-on-one coaching.
How do you involve ambassadors?
Ask them for joined meetings to evaluate the programme.
An advantage within a club is that several generations come together. Older athletes (or already retired player who are still active for the club) can serve as a kind of tutor for younger athletes. Assign them as a ‘buddy’ to a younger athlete that sometimes needs some advice or a mental boost. This tutor can then also get advice from the lifestyle or mental coach.
Let them participate in workshops and act as real life examples (maybe let them even give a workshop when they have the skills).
Be visible and let them know when and how they can reach out for you.
Guidelines for ambassadors to participate. As an ambassador ..
You are willing to participate in the possible workshops for the athletes.
You are aware of the dual career vision of the club and are able to communicate this with people outside the club.
You are able to take part in dual career team meetings within the club, as you are the person who has the experience.
When you are in contact with one or more athletes who might face some difficulties combining their sport and education or face other challenges / transitions, you are able to listen patiently to their stories and are able to provide helpful feedback or possible new insights. Besides that, you may give them relevant examples or motivational speeches.
You are able to effectively communicate with the dual career coordinator and to discuss to what extent you can and are willing to help.
You are able to acknowledge it when you face problems when guiding an athlete that you can’t handle and know who to turn to when she might be in need of an expert (sport psychologist or pedagogue for example).
You can play a part at the official kick-off of the programme and in workshops and information meetings that are organised as part of the DONA Dual Career Project. The club should use the success story of the ambassador as a marketing tool, put it on the website/ newsletter and bring it to the attention of the media.
You can play a part in the realisation of new covenants or agreements. You can have a stimulating effect within as well as outside of the club and is, especially because of your past, able to make the needed connections with the educational field and the labour market and carry out the importance a Dual Career programme.
findings and best practices as described in erasmus+ project icdc
From Slovenian Olympic Committee - experienced expert as tutor
The basis of both tutoring programs is to link ex-Olympians and former elite athletes to young sports talents. These former elite athletes have gone through a dual career themselves and can thus act as role models and optimally guide the young athletes. This guidance is not so much sports-oriented, but more about finding a balance between sport and school or work. The tutor supervises the important transitions in the dual career of talents throughout the entire sports career and also advises talents on career opportunities in addition to or after the sport.
Profile of a tutor - (FC Barcelona, Stichting Sporttop, NOC Slovenia)
The organizations that work with a tutor system within their Dual Career programme were asked what important characteristics are for the profile of a tutor within a sports club. The following practical aspects have been mentioned:
Involved: you are genuinely interested in what your talent does, you are attainable and accessible and make time for your talent.
Integrity: your talent must be able to rely on everything he/she tells you during coaching conversations being treated as confidential.
Independent: as a tutor, you do not interfere with the technical sports side of your talent and therefore you are an addition to the coaching team of your talent
Empathetic: you listen to and can really empathise with the world of your talent. Each individual has his own motives and it is important to discover them. Because only then you can understand the talent and guide it in its sustainable development.
From The SportMaatschappij en TASS
De Sportmaatschappij and Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme have both appointed Dual Career Ambassadors. These ambassadors have themselves had a successful dual career and are therefore true advocates of the importance of Dual Career. The ambassadors can play a part in the realization of new covenants or agreements. The ambassador can have a stimulating effect within as well as outside of the club and is, especially because of his or her past, able to make the needed connections with the educational field and the labour market and carry out the importance a Dual Career program. He or she can furthermore play a part at the official kick-off of the program and in workshops and information meetings that are organized as part of the Dual Career program. The club should use the success story of the ambassador as a marketing tool, put it on the website/ newsletter and bring it to the attention of the media. For example, De Sportmaatschappij publishes fact sheets with tips in Dual Career.
When you take a look at the social media accounts of De Sportmaatschappij you will see that this organisation is seriously working on its mission to make society more aware of what sports talents and elite athletes have to offer. For example, De Sportmaatschappij posts tweets and posts about successful Dual Career stories and about, for example, important competencies gained in top-level sports. The fact sheets (see alongside) of their ambassadors are also placed on social media. The purpose of these fact sheets is clearly to motivate sports talents and elite athletes for a dual career in a healthy balance and in which long term development is an important principle. De Sportmaatschappij also tweets a lot about its activities and programmes and the elite athletes of De Sportmaatschappij blog about their lives and dual careers. These social media activities raise awareness.
“A young athlete often looks up to the examples from the first teams of sports clubs. These older players are a lively source of inspiration. For this reason, sports clubs increasingly moved the training from the first team to the training complex of the youth department. Youthful athletes can then see much better what they are doing, and the first team remains much more part of the entire club.”