14 Sep 2009
Loughborough pair receive prestigious sports science awards
Sports psychologist Dr David Fletcher and recent PhD graduate Dr Vernon Neville from the University’s School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences (SSEHS) both collected newcomer awards at the BASES annual conference.
Dr Fletcher received the Tom Reilly Memorial Award which is presented for post-doctoral research of outstanding merit.
Dr Neville received the Routledge Recently Qualified Researcher Award after impressing with his presentation Optimising arm-crank configurations: Testing the most powerful upper-body athletes in sport, which reflected on his research into grinders in big boat sailing.
Dr Fletcher’s research focuses on the psychology of sporting excellence and how it can be applied to other high performance domains. His work provides insights into how high achievers deliver sustainable performances in pressured environments and he has worked with sports including swimming, tennis and golf.
He has published in and reviewed for various international peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, The Sport Psychologist, the Journal of Sports Sciences, the Psychology of Sport and Exercise, and the European Journal of Sport Science, and has presented his work at major international sport psychology conferences around the world.
“I’m obviously very proud to receive this award,” said Dr Fletcher. “I attended my first BASES conference in 1997 as a second year undergraduate and to meet and hear from top international researchers was a big moment for me at the start of my career.
“Now 12 years later to be recognised at that same event and to be the first recipient of the renamed Tom Reilly Award is a real honour and a privilege.”
Dr Fletcher was unable to collect his award in person as he was on stand-by for the Channel swim as part of a four-man relay.
His colleague Dr Neville, who was at the awards presentation, was surprised when his own name was called out, having being chosen by judges after his engaging presentation.
“It was a complete surprise,” he said. “It wasn’t something I was expecting but I’m really pleased and I think it’s a great reflection on the University and the important research it carries out.”