Oakham Sport Partnership first event

Thursday, 13 February 2025 10:36

The first event from the new Oakham Sport Partnership takes place tonight at Oakham School.

Called Developing Sporting Talent, Art or Science, former Oakham Director of Sport Dr Iain Simpson, along with Dr Karl Steptoe, who works as a sports psychologist at Loughborough University and Leicester City Football Club, are speaking to parents of 9-14 year olds about how best to support the sports stars of the future. Iain says they really wanted to give local parents the chance to learn more.

" It's a deep dive in to help parents in terms of navigating that talent journey for their children and debunking sort of a load of myths around talent, whether that's 10,000 hours or early specialization and things like that, and actually helping them with actually focusing on the things that are really important. And we know from evidence and research that the psychological development in children at that age really stands the test of time in terms of their talent journey. That's part of my kind of area of research, but I've also brought on board Dr Karl Steptoe, who is local to Oakham. Karl's head of Applied and Performance Sports Psychology at Loughborough University. He's also the sports psychologist for the Leicester City First team, er, the football team. So Karl and I are going to run that session, and we would normally invite parents of Oakham school children, but this time we're going to put it out to the whole community, and to parents of rugby players, football players, gymnasts, swimmers. Whatever it is, if they're interested in that kind of thing, it's a free event, and we'll invite all the community to it."