Dr Pippa Bailey
Pippa's research focused on closing the gap in understanding the demands of female wheelchair basketball competition. Her work measured the work completed on court and the heart rate responses during international competition, allowing practitioners to better manipulate training sessions and prepare athletes for international tournaments.
Through an embedded scientist approach, Pippa also examined longitudinal training load, performance metrics, and their relationship with athlete wellbeing, providing valuable insights into how to optimise the training adaptation process.
Pippa's PhD was supervised by Professor Vicky Tolfrey and Dr Richard Blagrove, and examined by Professor Claudio Perret and Dr Laura Barret. The PHC extends sincere thanks to British Wheelchair Basketball for their ongoing support and collaboration throughout Pippa's research.
Dr Yash Deshpande
Yash's PhD focused on the perception of serves in wheelchair tennis and the role of advance information sources in the process. His research comprised four studies, beginning with two studies exploring time constraints in international wheelchair tennis matches and the experiences of expert players when returning serves. The aim of these studies was to understand the importance of anticipation and advance information sources.
His third study examined the difference between skilled and novice players to understand if experts were better attuned to early information sources and had higher response accuracy while predicting serve direction. The final study provided proof of concept for a perceptual training intervention aimed at improving the perceptual skills of participants to levels comparable with skilled players.
Yash's PhD was supervised by Dr Robin Jackson, Professor Mark King, and Professor Vicky Tolfrey, and exmained by Dr Oliver Runswick and Professor Chris Spray. The PHC would also like to thank Alex Cockram and the Lawn Tennis Association for their invaluable support throughout Yash's doctoral journey.
Please join us in congratulating Dr Pippa Bailey and Dr Yash Deshpande on their outstanding achievements and in wishing them every success in their future careers.