Wendy Russell crowned Disability Coach of the Year
Active Sussex Coaching Ambassador Wendy Russell is the winner of the Disability Coach of the Year Award at Sports Coach UK's Coaching Awards 2015.
The Awards, which took place on Tuesday 1 December, are the most prestigious in the coaching community, and honour sports coaches who have shown outstanding success over the past 12 months.
Wendy won the award due to her innovative work expanding deaf hockey in Sussex. She started the fist ever deaf hockey club in Sussex and created her own hockey-specific sign language.
The new language has now been ratified by Remark! and is being rolled out by UK deaf sport, the National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS) & England Hockey.
Wendy said:
'If I needed to communicate with participants, I would have to think about other ways of doing so. There is no sign language, for example, for a hockey stick or dribbling, so what I had to do was create 40 new sign language signs that are now being used across the country. I'm really proud of that.'
Wendy's Brighton-based deaf hockey project also won 'Sportivate Project of the Year' award at the Sussex Sports Awards 2015 on 27 November at The Grand Hotel, Brighton, and she was nominated for the 'Community Award' at The Sunday Times & Sky Sports News Sportswomen of the Year Awards
Her plans for 2016 include supporting other clubs who have deaf hockey players, and to start up more adult deaf hockey teams.
