Mary Peters Trust funding initiative helps Castlereagh athlete Erin progress her coaching career

Set up by the Trust and the family of David Magill, who passed away in November 2021 aged 86, the initiative aims to help young athletes take up coaching courses relevant to their chosen sport.

Castlereagh girl Erin is a pole-vaulter and competes in other track and field events, in particular long jump.

The 22-year-old Queen’s University medical student has been involved in athletics since she was eight and first took up pole-vaulting at the age of 12.

Erin has competed for Northern Ireland in both the long jump and pole-vaulting and is already supporting younger athletes having completed assistant coach programmes.

Erin completed an assistant coach course in 2020 and her David Magill bursary will enable her to take up the ‘full’ athletics coaching course covering more in-depth technical aspects allowing her to coach several athletics disciplines and help young rising athletes to further develop their skills and technique.

Erin said: “This course is the next step up from the assistant course and similarly encompasses a wide range of field athletics events but has more technical content as well as well as more extensive detail on how to coach and plan training sessions.

"Once qualified, I’ll be a much more experienced coach and can lead sessions without supervision. Hopefully it will unlock lots of new sporting opportunities for me.”