Bridgwater & Taunton College (BTC) is the only college or higher education establishment across Somerset, Devon and Cornwall to lead the way with supporting talented athletes in education in England.

Colleges are assessed on their ability to support talented athletes on the academic element of their development. BTC is extremely proud to be accredited with a TASS status. By formally recognising BTC’s commitment to supporting student athletes, the TASS Dual Career Accreditation Scheme aims to allow our athletes to reach their potential in education alongside achieving success in their sport.

BTC will ensure the sport support package offered includes a range of core services including lifestyle, psychology, strength and conditioning, physiotherapy, nutrition, a medical scheme and an athlete personal award. These services will be delivered by qualified practitioners based at or near to our campuses.

The support technique and skills BTC offers to you as a student include:

• Lifestyle – Practitioners will support you to balance sport and learning into your lifestyle, focusing on empowerment. Support may take the form of workshops looking at time management, education and career planning, budgeting, one-to-one guidance.
• Psychology – These skills involve techniques to support sporting performance and include concentration/focusing techniques, confidence, resilience, anxiety management, goal setting and counselling. If focusing on team skills, we will support leadership, communication, team goals etc.
• Strength and Conditioning – Strength and conditioning plays an important role in building robust athletes. It supports not only the physical characteristics of an athlete, but also helps to reduce the risk of injury brought on because of the demands of the training undertaken. If you do incur an injury, we will support your rehabilitation to make it as swift as possible for you to return to training and competition.
• Physiotherapy – It is important for you to understand the factors which contribute to your development and peak performance. Physiotherapy plays a key role role in injury assessment and treatment, injury prevention, performance enhancement and body awareness. As an athlete, it is important that you understand how physiotherapy and medical support can impact in ways other than just as a reaction to injury. performance.
• Nutrition – You will be given advice to support your understanding of basic diet behaviours and details of nutritional strategies to help focus on the demands of athletes.

BTC will ensure that the package we offer meets the needs of the student to support not only their educational pathway but their sporting career as well.

For student athletes, the academic flexibility policies may mean they have the opportunity to access online notes or resources, are able to arrange catch up sessions with teachers, or even reschedule deadlines or exam dates in exceptional circumstances.

For more information about the TASS scheme please email sport@btc.ac.uk or call 01278 441322.