Skelton Cleveland Special Olympics Boccia Club

We are a sports group for young people and adults with a learning disability. Through the sport of Boccia via a weekly training programme and a competition framework we aim to increase our athletes skills, help them learn new skills, make new friends and improve in confidence and self esteem. Boccia is an inclusive precision sport belonging to the bowls family which can be played on an individual and team basis. We mainly play the team game which also enables us to focus on improving the athletes skills of listening and communicating both with each other and with coaches and games officials. Those who are able to take on leadership roles have a pivotal role as they can then lead athletes with less ability and allow them to play as part of an independent team, that is not requiring prompts from a coach thus also increasing their confidence if they are able to successfully participate in a game with minimal coach intervention. We have seen how athletes have developed in this role and we now have some athletes who will lead a team in a competitive situation and communicate with the referee coming out of their playing position to assess the scoring situation and advise their team on future play based on this information. This is a huge achievement for our athletes. A number of athletes have physical difficulties in addition to a learning disability and the ethos is to work together to support each other