Get to know your Inspire-ing team
Our Sport Swansea Team are a dedicated and passionate team committed to improving lives through sport and physical activity. The Sport Swansea ‘Inspire’ pillar oversees all high performing sports and sports scholars at Swansea University, working closely with individuals to ensure they can achieve their sporting dreams alongside their studies. By providing a dual-career programme, the inspire team provide dedicated performance support and resources for talented athletes in sport.
Meet Imelda Phillips – our Performance Sport Manager.
Imelda manages our high-performance sport programmes, leading a team of talented performance sport managers, and experienced student support officers who are passionate in supporting our athletes to achieve their dual-career success both in their academics and sporting life. Imelda focuses on delivering a high-quality performance sports programme for the University, whilst continuing to work with the team to provide a gold-standard opportunity for prospective students. Imelda achieves this through identifying pathways from beginner through to elite, developing and nurturing internal and external networks, including academic links and strives to maintain our TASS accreditation. Recently, Imelda worked on developing an Elite International Sports Scholarship for our overseas athletes, ensuring their experience at Swansea University is to an exceptional standard, creating a home away from home environment, and supporting with academic flexibility and sporting success. As Swansea University Alumni, Imelda completed her MSc in Sports and Exercise Science. Imelda has always had a passion for high-level sport, having been an international athletics athlete, specialising in long jump. Fun fact: Imelda likes to spend her weekend with her family and taking long walks with her two Golden Retrievers, Max and Penny.
Meet Verity Cook – our Athlete Support Officer.
Within our Inspire team, we have two athlete support officers who provide outstanding care and support for our high-performance athletes and scholars. Verity has been a part of the team for nearly two years now, providing high-level support to high-performing athletes, and looks forward to seeing what the sporting scholar are looking to achieve in 2024. Verity meets with scholars on a regular basis to ensure the athletes are balancing their sporting and academic focus, providing flexibility in our athlete’s university life to achieve their dual-career success. This is not Verity’s first role working within the sporting world. Verity spent many years with Welsh Triathlon, where she worked as programme coordinator, helping to deliver support to the Welsh Triathlon performance programmes. Verity is a keen swimmer, and often trains with the High-Performance swim squad. During August, Verity attended the Para Swimming World Championships as Team Manager in Manchester, an incredible achievement and great experience.
Meet Lloyd Ashley – our Athlete Support Officer.
Now it’s time to introduce our second athlete support officer, Lloyd, who works closely alongside Verity. Lloyd ensures our high-performing athletes and scholars are balancing both their studies and sporting dreams as best they can and makes it his priority to support the wellbeing and mental health of our athletes. Lloyd has recently been working on a document that provides our athletes with all the details required if they are in search of support for their wellbeing and welfare, titled ‘Our People, Our Support’ which can be found on our social media channel. Lloyd is a huge advocate for positive mental health in sport, so much so that he created his own company – Living Well with Lloyd Ashley (LWLA), where he takes talks with different organisations and clubs to ensure everyone is looking after their wellbeing. Having previously been a successful professional rugby player, representing the Ospreys and Scarlets, Lloyd is aware of the pressure sport can put on an individual, and makes it his mission to support those who need to find a balance between sport and lifestyle.
You can meet the scholars that Verity and Lloyd support here.