How Catapult is Driving Innovation in Higher Education Sports with New BUCS Partnership
Today, BUCS, the National Governing Body of university sport in the United Kingdom has partnered with Catapult, the global performance technology leader in elite sports.
The three-year partnership will focus on education and awareness of sports science within the higher education sports industry, working together to increase innovation and the adoption of technology to improve individual athlete and team performance.
Andy Gilvary, Head of Competitions and Performance at BUCS, commented on the announcement:
“We are delighted to announce Catapult as a partner for the next three years. As university sport continues to be recognised as an important pathway to elite sport, the use of technology is on the rise, and Catapult can play an important part in this growth.
“The value that they bring to the sports performance sector is world class, and we look forward to our universities embracing this knowledge and technology and developing their offerings for years to come.”
Click here to partner your higher education team or university with Catapult.
Already well renowned in the higher education sports sector, Catapult offers athlete monitoring, video analysis, and athlete management solutions to more than 3,400 teams around the world.
Designed to optimise performance, avoid injury, and quantify return to play, Catapult’s solutions are currently utilised by 30 universities across the United Kingdom, including Loughborough University, Cardiff Metropolitan University and Leeds Beckett University, for both research and performance purposes.
Catapult X BUCS: About the new partnership
As part of the collaboration with BUCS, Catapult will be attending BUCS Conference and Winter Summit as an official partner. At the upcoming BUCS Conference in July, Catapult will be delivering an educational workshop, highlighting the existing work with universities, successes and learnings.
Catapult will also be sponsoring the Coach of the Year Award at this year’s BUCS Awards, a highly contested and coveted Award which has previously been won by the likes of the University of Birmingham’s Head of Athletics Luke Gunn.
“We’re really looking forward to working with BUCS over the next three years. We’ve seen the development of BUCS competitions and the pathways that have been created for student athletes into professional sport, as well as the benefits of a data-driven approach for both coaches and athletes,” said Jacob Sherwood, Business Development Manager at Catapult Sports.
“As well as the usual application of education and research, more universities are looking to utilise our technology with their performance sports teams, with the added benefit of enabling students to undertake internal placements, gaining experience in the applied environment.”
To give us a greater understanding of what Loughborough University is trying to achieve with their students on their MSc Performance Analysis course, we sat down with Senior Lecturer in Performance Analysis, Andrew Butterworth, at our most recent Annual Conference to find out more:
Working worldwide in the higher education sports sector
Catapult is the go-to provider in team sports technology in the higher education sports sector. The implementation of Catapult technology at Universities around the world means that hundreds of thousands of student-athletes benefit from a performance infrastructure that helps optimise performance, reduce injury risk, and improve the communication of data-driven insights and athlete information.
This partnership with BUCS extends Catapult’s association within the higher education sports sector. Last year, Catapult announced it now powers seven Boston College athletic programs.
In the Boston College announcement, Boston College representatives said: “These wearable and video solutions will help our coaches and athletes make objective decisions about student-athlete performance, health and wellness so they can continue to get better over time.”
Click here to read more about Boston College.