Learning outcome: 12.1

The student reflects on her own sports identity and compares this with the feedback and opinion of clients, colleagues and customers on his professional performance.

Looking at myself and my own sports identity, I can say that during the last two years I grew in different ways. I got the position of head trainer of the youngest youth at HC de Hondsrug, became manager of GHBS JB1, did an internship at Topsport NOORD and worked in different projects related to sports and cultural awareness. I can say that my sports identity is quit rich and that I am interested in all kind of sports. Going to work on the Olympics or working for the NOC*NSF is still a dream of me, but during the last year I found out that I want to start working in smaller companies and organisations before I want to work in bigger organisations. At this moment I have the feeling that although my sports identity and knowledge is quit rich, I have to improve a lot and gain more experience in working at bigger organisations and companies before I want to work for one of the biggest events in the world. These smaller steps that I will take, will lead me eventually to new roads and this will all be beneficial for my dreams.

During the last study year of Sport Studies year 2, I can say that my sports identity improved in comparison to my sports identity of last year. Before this study year, I was involved in a lot of clubs and had experience within a lot of sports etc, but I didn’t had the experience yet to work with real talents and to work within the higher leagues of sports competitions and on national and international level. My internship at Topsport NOORD brought me in an environment with talents, but because Topsport NOORD was located in Thialf, I came in contact with the high performance environment of speedskating and everything that comes with that. There were a lot of good training facilities, strict guidelines, a lot of employees to create the best possible environment for the athletes and of course the athletes themselves. This was an inspiration and was a good experiences for my personal sports identity. I found out that managing within such an environment is something that I would like to do and showed me on which factors I need to focus in order to improve my professional performance. This can also be found in the feedback I received from my internship supervisor, together with the compliment that they could see me working with them in the future. I was and am still proud of this feedback because it says something about how I behaved on the work floor and how I fitted in that organisation.

Also the fact that I manage GHBS JB1 gave me experience in working for a team with a lot of talents, and which is at this moment the best hockey team in their age of the northern part of the Netherlands. We almost reached the top national league, but unfortunately we scored not enough goals so we are now in the Super League of the Netherlands. For me it was an experiences to see how different parents from this team approach me in comparison to parents from the club where I coach and train for a longer period of time. The parents at GHBS are willing to help were they can and are not complaining about small things. This is really a different mindset and is also visible in the behaviour of the parents. For my personal sports identity and my personal performance, this experiences helped me to create a better vision on how and where I see myself in the future and how it is to work with other managers in a top national league.

If I look at the feedback that my fellow students gave me on my sports identity and professional performance, I can say that they are all really positive about my behaviour and this really helps me to look at my personal development plan that I made last year and shows me that I really improved and developed some skills that I wanted to develop. In this way, I can say that it wasn’t only in my mind that I thought I developed, but also other people see it. This makes me happy and proud, and also eager to help others in this process.

Since the beginning of the study, I feel responsible for the environment in my class and I want to help the study and school develop of being intercultural aware. From the first week of the first year, I decided to become Group Contact Person and I take that role serious. But I am also trying to help at the open days of the Hanze and I am the WhatsApp contact person of the study in which I try to help possible future students in answering their questions and try to help them in making a good decision. Last year I also helped during the Grotius Program from the Hanze, in which I covered a role a buddy for some refugees who want to study in the Netherlands next year. More about this can be found in PLO 12.2 of Year 2.