Studying a sport coaching degree – what I’ve found

Darja Knotkova-Hanley is in the final year of our Sport Coaching BSc(Hons) degree. They took some time out from their studies to chat about their experience.

My course is a perfect match

I have had a strong interest in sport from a very young age. I’ve always loved being active and staying fit and wanted to help other people do so. I also really wanted to do something practical, and I knew I would enjoy it. Sport Coaching was the perfect match. It gave me a brilliant balance between practical learning and sports science theory.

Open days helped

At first, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do sports science or sport coaching, but the subject talks helped me to decide. They were really informative and helped me understand differences between the two courses. At the open day, all the students were friendly, approachable and helpful. They were very easy to chat to. That made me realise that I belonged at the university. I just knew Brighton was the right choice and I would easily make friends. I certainly did!

I love practical learning

One of the things I really liked about my course was the range of assessments: practical coaching episodes, poster presentations, videos and coursework assignments. I loved all the practical parts as they really helped me learn. In my second and third year, we picked two option modules. I thought this was really good as it let me focus on the aspects of sport I really wanted to learn. I chose to study strength and conditioning and sports psychology.

I loved joining Brighton Panthers

I’ve always enjoyed distance running and I joined Brighton Panthers, the university athletics team. Being part of the team allowed me to meet people with common interests. I represented the university in national running competitions, something I was extremely proud of. I want to work in rehab My final year modules were particularly useful for the job I’d like to do in future – working as a rehabilitation assistant with older people. My final year health psychology module gave me a lot of insight into the way people think about sport and exercise, while the strength and conditioning module improved my understanding of movement quality and how to assess it. As someone who really wasn’t sure what they wanted to do, I now know I want to work in exercise rehabilitation!

Support is there

As a student with additional needs, I relied on the university’s Disability and Dyslexia Services quite a lot. When I first applied, the Disability and Dyslexia team advised me how to apply for the Disabled Students Allowance. I had a meeting with my learning support coordinator, and they wrote my learning support plan. I also had both study skills and mentoring support as well as automatic two-week extensions for all my assignments. All my support was extremely well organised, the team were great and I can’t thank them enough. It has made a huge difference to my time at university.

Learn more about studying sport and exercise at the University of Brighton.