Reading Rockets

Reading Rockets

Customer Story

The Reading Rockets is an elite level basketball club which has achieved huge success with its Senior, Junior, Academy and Community development programmes and runs the AASE (Advanced Apprenticeship in Sporting Excellence) programme. Rockets is now one of the most successful clubs in England and established its Rockets Sport and Educational Foundation charity in 2012. It has gained Sport England’s kitemark ‘ClubMark’ and England Basketball’s 4-star accreditation.

The heart of the Rockets club is passion, vision, quality, motivation and commitment – unified with family values and standards.

16

Wheels

1

Setting

49

Users

What were you looking for? What challenges did you hope to overcome?

I had spent years in the Performance Academy world, from National League to GB U20s, and I had simply not found a way to monitor the athletes effectively and with anything that engaged them.

We were challenged by having a number of athletes on different trajectories, so we needed a tool that was able to accurately and honestly reflect their journeys. We also needed to give the Directors a way to assess the effectiveness of the coaches over the time they worked with the athletes.

Why did you choose The Development Wheel?

I wasn’t aware that such a tool existed in the sports world... After many hours of discussion and ‘wow’ moments with Create Development, we created The Development Wheel that fitted hand-in-glove with exactly what we were looking for and that made commercial sense for us to show the tracking and monitoring of all our academy athletes.

The conversations have become richer, the discussions more streamlined and the process much easier for us all.

How have you implemented The Development Wheel to achieve your goals?

At the outset the beauty of it was that I was able to take a number of almost pre-written areas, adapt them for my specific situation and, within a few days, it was ready to go. We now currently have 50 athletes on the Wheel and 10 coaches using it.

I am still learning new tools to use as we go, as it has so many levels depending on your role in the process but, safe to say, I have really loved the opportunity it has provided.

What impact has using The Development Wheel had at your organisation?

At first, we felt the Wheel was more for monitoring the progress of the athlete, and it certainly does that really well. The added bonus of such systems means we can also now help the coaches see where they are lacking in knowledge, skills or understanding across the board so we can adapt our CPD/mentoring programme to suit the needs of the staff. The conversations have become richer, the discussions more streamlined and the process much easier for us all.

Would you recommend The Development Wheel to others?

Highly. In today’s world, everything is about how we measure the journey to evidence the effectiveness of the staff, school, leadership and athletes. This is an honest and personal friend to all of those who decide to look deeper into their reality as a coach or athlete.

The Wheel is simple to set up, invaluable for the players, great for the coaches and effective for the coach developers.

Matt Johnson, Director of Performance Sports, Reading Rockets Basketball