December 2021
On December 10, 2021, the fifth virtual EAS cafè addressed the support of dual career high school athletes especially during the critical pandemic situation. Masar Gjaka, winner of the 2018 Bengt Nybelius award and currently Dean of the Faculty of Sport and Movement Science, UBT College, Pristina, Kosovo, moderated the event, which offered Italian, Slovenian, and Danish approaches and experiences, as well as an opportunity to envisage future actions and visions in dual career of talented athletes.
Paola Deiana, Director of the Office V, Italian Ministry of Education, presented the development of the experimental dual career high school programme, which was introduced in 2015 and currently involves more than 1500 schools, 5000 tutors, and 14000 athletes meeting the requirements established by the Italian Olympic Committee, Italian Paralympic Committee and the Italian Sports Federations. Despite its positive trend, this programme involves a lower number of female athletes with respect to male athletes and a low percentage of Paralympic athletes with respect to their Olympic counterparts. Paola Deiana anticipated that the Italian Ministry of Education is envisaging an extension of the programme to all the Italian schools, from the primary schools to the universities, and an equity for gender and capabilities. Furthermore, she highlighted the need of an innovative educational approach, which should be effective in providing knowledge with a reduced live-teaching time and encompassing sports issues in the different topics of high school curricula.
Jožef Križaj, Assistant Professor and Head of the Postgraduate Doctoral Studies Department at the Faculty of Sport University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, gave a contribution as a researcher and as a parent supporting the dual career of elite youth athletes. He illustrated the dual career programme at the Slovenian high schools and presented some challenges youth athletes faced during the COVID-19 lockdown. In particular, he disclosed the results of a national research, which highlighted differences between athletes of individual and team sports, the latter suffering more the negative effects of lockdown for missing group training sessions and weekly competitions. Jožef Križaj urged particular attention to adolescent athletes to prevent pandemic-related sport dropouts and to sustain a proper development of sport skills during the post-pandemic time. This concern is especially evident after the past two years and can heavily affect the sports system in a near future.
Ole Keldorf, Head of Sport at the prestigious Elite Sports Academy of Aarhus (ESAA), Denmark, and member of the EAS Executive Board, gave a precious contribution to the debate in presenting the pandemic-related critical aspects observed in Danish youth athletes. Data from the ESAA observatory suggest that dual career actors should place particular attention to the talented youth athletes’ perception and attitudes towards sports, life, and wellbeing. He claimed that the European dual career culture should consider particularly relevant the mental health of youth athletes and offered the ESAA survey as a valuable example of dual career best practice for monitoring the wellbeing of athletes as students. In fact, the systematic collection of athletes’ perceptions regarding their sports enjoyment, recovery, and social aspects could be crucial not only to prevent sport disengagement and dropouts but also to foreseeing new avenues for sport development. Ole Keldorf also called for a cooperation between countries to share possible solutions to the challenges posed by this pandemic situation.
In considering the call for the Next Decade of European Education through a cooperation between educational institutions in different countries (https://ec.europa.eu/education/summit/next-decade-european-education_en ), members of the EAS community were invited to be proactive in establishing innovative collaborative partnerships in dual career for high school athletes.
The fifth EAS Virtual Cafè attracted around 60 European dual career experts and will come back on February 2022.
On December 2, 2021, the Associació Esportiva Carles Vallbona (AECV, coordinator) hosted the final event of the European Collaborative Partnership “Dual Career for Women Athletes” (DONA), which aimed to support dual career of talented female athletes in cooperation with Phoenix Sport Club (PSC), Scuola di Pallavolo Anderlini Soc. Coop. Sociale SD (SPA), Istres Provence Volley (IPV), De SportMaatschappij Foundation (DSM), University of Ljubljana (UL), and the European Athlete as Student (EAS) network (EAS). Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, DONA succeeded in offering a pilot programme on female athletes’ Dual Career competences (i.e., monitoring and evaluation toolkit) at the level of volleyball clubs.
Joan Carles Marín, project coordinator, opened the face-to-face conference and welcomed 200 participants.
Leonard Zammit (Phoenix Sport Club) illustrated the aims, development, and outcomes of the project. In particular, she stressed the DONA methodology for successfully approaching and enhancing female athletes’ Dual Careers, which encompassed quantitative and qualitative analyses.
Federica Stradi (Scuola di Pallavolo Anderlini Soc. Coop. Sociale SD) presented five steps for implementing Dual Career at a volleyball club level, encompassing Coordinator and Dual Career Club Management Team, Philosophy, Communication, Implementation and Monitoring. In considering that the COVID pandemic affected the time management, goal setting and identity of athletes, Noemí Bonet (psychologist of AECV) and Joan Carles Marín (President of AECV) presented the impact of the DONA project and offered ideas for the future.
Moderated by TV3 journalist Jordi Sanuy, Ona Carbonell (synchronized swimming Olympic medalist), Aina Berbel (international player at CV Sant Cugat), Maribel Zamora (President of the Catalan Volleyball Federation), Anna González (mother of a volleyball player) and Gloria Montoy (education inspector) discussed in round table Dual Career of female athletes.
The Italian Olympic Committee hosted the final event of the Sport Opens School
On November 23, 2021, the Italian Olympic Committee hosted in the prestigious Sala d’Onore of Foro Italico the final event of the European Collaborative partnership Sports Opens School (SOS). Due to COVID-19 restriction, the event was organized in a blended modality with around 70 participants face-to-face and more than 100 booked for the online modality.
During its lifetime, the eight partners of SOS (Centro Universitario Sportivo, CUS Padova – ITA,
Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano, CONI – ITA, Inspectoratul Școlar Județean Bacău – ROM, Instituto N.ª Sra. da Encarnação – Cooperativa de Ensino, ECB – POR, Istituto di Istruzione Superiore ‘Newton-Pertini’ – ITA, Budapest VI. Kerületi Kölcsey Ferenc Gimnázium, KFG – HUN, and the European Athlete as Student Network – MLT) cooperated to develop a new teaching method for high school physical education teachers.
Dr. Marco Arpino and Dr. Jacopo Tognon (CONI) opened the conference and Mr. Riccardo Garavello (CUS Padova) welcomed the participants of CUS Padova. Dr. Paola Deiana (Office V, Italian Ministry of Education) stressed the relevant role of physical education for the holistic development of young students and supported new approaches of school physical education to enhance active lifestyles and the sport culture.
Marianna Pavan (CUS Padova), Laura Capranica (EAS), Laura Brazzarola (CUS Padova), and André Luís (ECB) illustrated the project’s aims, development, and outcomes. In particular, the initial phase of SOS encompassed research updates on three main areas Physical Activity and Health; Fairplay and Integrity; Life and Employability Skills. Furthermore, school coordinators provided an overview of the specific situation of each partner school. This narrative research allowed to create the 15 SOS Physical Education teaching sheets and teaching units, translated in English, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Following the analysis of data collected during a monitoring phase, the SOS toolkit is now available to be used at high school levels as a part of the traditional PE curriculum (https://www.sportopensschool.eu).
Finally, Antoni Balàsz (KFG) offered the opinions of the students participating in the project and Marta Gravina (CUS Padova) presented the closing remarks.
Dear Dual Career Friends and Colleagues,
2021 has not been an easy year, with ongoing pandemic waves and proliferation of new COVID variants affecting our life. Despite the restrictions, EAS strengthened its efforts in Dual Career by consolidating virtual cafes to discuss stories and visions with experts, participating in activities of several European Collaborative Partnerships, contributing to online European consultations, organizing the Annual Conference in Lisbon, 2021 European Capital of Sport, in a blended modality, and awarding the 2020 and 2021 Bengt Nybelius Scholarships.
Discussions on “Dual Career of migrating athletes”, “media role in the promotion of the European Dual Career culture”, “implementing Dual Career policies and provisions at university level”, and “well-being and mental health for Dual Career athletes at high school level” have been the topic of the 2021 EAS virtual cafè. All of us are invited to propose Dual Career topics to be addressed in 2022.
During this challenging year four Collaborative Partnerships have been finalized with outstanding outcomes, encompassing the More Than Gold guidelines for implementing Dual Career at higher education institutions, the EMPATIA online and multilingual educational programme for parents of Dual Career athletes, the EdMedia online educational programme and guidelines to enhance the visibility of Dual Career athletes, the SportOpensSchool multilingual teaching method for high school physical education teachers. Furthermore, EAS also contributed to the dissemination of knowledge gathered in Dual Career projects, which were published in five peer-review journals and submitted for further three publications. Even though the COVID-related restrictions heavily challenged the ongoing BRAVA-DC, EL-CAMP, PARA-LIMITS and STARTING11 Dual Career projects, their activities are proceeding. Finally, our Network participated in applications to the ERASMUS+ Sport 2021 Call for Collaborative Partnerships on Dual Career, hopefully to be started in 2022.
During the past months EAS contributed to the consultations on the sports policies at the European level, supporting the role of education in and through sport and proposing to extend Dual Career to sport staff (e.g., coaches, physical trainers, referees, and sport managers). Furthermore, EAS contributed to the debate for the revision of the European Sport Charter and the online events organized by the Bureau of the Consultative Committee of EPAS-Council of Europe.
Thanks to the courage, efforts, and hard work of the Organizing Committee of the University Institute of Lisbon several members attended in presence the 2021 annual conference, renovating friendship and establishing new collaborations. Furthermore, to keep a strong relationship with those who were still restricted in their travelling due to COVID-19, an online option was made available. During the General Assembly, Antonio Sanchez-Pato, Dean of the Faculty of Sport at UCAM, was elected member of the Executive Board in replacement of Joerg Foerster, who resigned his position due to a new prestigious career progression. Having appreciated Joerg’s dedication to EAS since its very beginning, all of us wish to keep collaborating with him whenever possible for the benefit of the holistic development of athletes. Meantime, the wide experience and commitment of Antonio to Dual Career are the guarantee for further advancement of our network and a successful 19th EAS Annual Conference to be organized by UCAM in Cartagena, Spain, in 2022. Finally, the EAS Executive Board appointed Ole Keldorf, Head of Sport ESAA, as Secretary General in recognition of his efforts to the European dual career network.
The holiday season is here and with it the end of 2021. We take this opportunity to celebrate hope and faith for a better future. Together, we will continue disseminating the European Dual Career culture at local, national and international levels for the benefit of athletes as students. We also remind you to renew your 2022 EAS membership through the link http://www.dualcareer.eu/membership/.
In embracing the joy and traditions of the holiday season, the Executive Board of EAS wishes you and your family a full restart in 2022.
REG. NUMBER: Voluntary Organisation registration VO/1270
PIC NUMBER: 913459865
Email: info@dualcareer.eu