2011

Hello and Happy New Year

This is an information newsletter on the Elite Academy in Amsterdam, The . It explains how the Academy has progressed over the last few years and where it is going in the future.

I am enjoying my tenth year running the Academy. We have had some great success in helping to launch many players onto the international platform and help them achieve their potential.

Some of our past successes have been (Netherlands, World Champion), Annelize Naude (Netherlands, World No.13), Wee Wern Low (, current World No.13), Ellen Petterson (Denmark, World No. 16), Sharon Wee (Malaysia, World No.18) and Louise Crome (New Zealand, World No.22). A number of past players also still come through for specialized training from time to time.

I have a new team on board who have been benefiting the current players coming through especially in 2010. Last year we had our busiest year with a total of 25 female players attending the Academy. They ranged from players ranked World No.1–200, as well as development players aged 13-18 yrs. from Malaysia, the current World No.1 and World Champion is full-time at the Academy along with Aisling Blake (Ireland, World No.22, 2010) and new members Lotte Eriksen (Norwegian No. 1) and Cigany Sellevis (Netherlands), who is getting back to competition from an Achilles rupture 15 months ago. Samantha Teran (Mexico) achieved her highest World ranking of No.11 in 2010 and is a frequent visitor for training and personal coaching phases.

The following information introduces myself and the team at the Liz Irving Elite Squash Academy. We are looking forward to a tremendous 2011. Please feel free to email if you have any requests for player development. We have openings throughout the year for major training phases and individual or team development. We arrange everything necessary, including excellent apartment accommodation close to the training facility. Player Tournament Round-up

The Team

Liz Irving (Brisbane, ) Coach

Liz is a former World No. 2 and enjoyed over thirteen years consistently in the World Top 5. She is a World Champion in mixed doubles and a World Team Champion (for Australia) for ten years. Liz was on the professional tour since the first inception of Wispa in 1983 and soon became a board member for several years. At just eighteen years of age she toured full-time and from the age of twenty one began her consistency in the World’s Top 5 until an early exit due to injury in 1998.

However still with a great love for the game she got involved with coaching in Amsterdam from 1999 and continued to participate in Wispa events while coaching full-time. She permanently retired from competition in 2002 after representing Australia at the Commonwealth

Games. She was a former coach to Vanessa Atkinson (World Champion, 2004) and also the Dutch National coach from 2001–2005. She now coaches Nicol David (current World No. 1) Liz has continually aspired to develop and learn as a person and as a player, giving the perfect opportunity for any female player who also have a great love for the game and willingness to learn.

Liz started the Elite Squash Academy in 2001 and has a large number of players yearly coming through for specialized training and coaching. The Liz Irving Elite Squash Academy is based at Squash City in Amsterdam. This club is in the centre of Amsterdam and a hub to easy travel and affordable living. Working as the Head Pro, Liz and players benefit from the great mix between club and elite coaching. The environment is perfectly suited for professional training. The club has thirteen squash courts, a fully equipped gym and is currently enjoying a real boom time in squash. Players ranked in the world from No. 1 - 200 are able to come and enjoy the wealth of information from the coaching, training and medical staff that are attached to the Academy.

Patrick Willems (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Trainer

Patrick started at age of four with judo and followed with several other sports like tennis, basketball, soccer and with his biggest passion being track and field. At sixteen, he switched over to concentrate fully on track and field professionally, specifically 400m and 800m. Patrick was the Dutch National Junior Champion several times and has competed with the best in europe and worldwide. As a senior his best results, next to national titles, were fifth at the European Championships (400m) and sixth at the World Championships (800m).

Aside from participating, he also enjoyed many aspects of personal training and decided after his successful career to become a trainer/coach. Patrick combined his sports training passion at the same time as being an athlete and competing.

In 1998 he graduated from the CIOS, a college for general sports education. During his education there he chose several main courses:- fitness & aerobics, track & field, strength & conditioning and sports massage. Patrick has successfully transferred his wealth of knowledge as a high performance athlete to being able to train elite level athletes for all sports.

He works as a personal trainer and strength and conditioning coach. He has coached hockey, soccer, volleyball and basketball at sports clubs. During that time he gathered a lot of insight and experience about training top level athletes, combining his own experience as a 400m and 800m runner and as a personal trainer and coach. He worked with several world-class athletes in areas of improving their basic needs to become better athletes.

Patrick’s vision is “The Better the Basics, The Higher the Top will be”, with the basics being strength, condition, flexibility and movement.

In 2010 he started working with squash players and came to the same conclusion, that specific sport training was on a higher level than the sessions on the court. His philosophy is “ to believe that when you can bring the level of the sessions off the court up, you’ll become a better squash player.”

Karen Maree (Johannesburg, South Africa) Trainer

Karen is a former captain of the South African hockey team. She has competed at the Olympics, and all the major World Cup hockey events.

A great athlete in her own right, she has and continues to be a major support in the Academy. She runs her own fitness and training consultancy company as well as teaching at the British School along with coaching hockey teams who participate in the major Dutch national league.

Karen is part time on request. She has been working with Nicol David for the last six years and continues to add diversity to Nicol David and the Academy players in training. She has been living in the Netherlands for a number of years.

Frank Cabooter (Netherlands)

Sports Psychologist

Frank’s father was a gymnastic teacher and so he had contact with a number of sports at an early age. Frank is involved with wind surfing and kite surfing. He has a strong interest in judo sports which also include Jiu Jitsu. Frank is now also an avid squash player at recreational level.

Mental aspects in these sports are extremely important for winning competition. It is because of these sports that got him interested in the subject of sports psychology. Frank has his Masters of Sports Psychology and is registered with the Dutch Association of Sport

Psychology. He also followed a postdoc education for health psychology, developing his interest for athletes with mental health problems.

Frank believes that every athlete has a basic set of mental skills. Being able to deal with pressure, staying focused at the right times, staying motivated for training and competition and having enough confidence. Through his work with athletes he noticed that these skills progress due to mental training programs. During the first session he interviews athletes about their mental skills and lets them fill in a specially formulated questionnaire so that he gets a good idea about what part of mental training they could work on. Then he teaches them a set of basic mental strategies, e.g. goal setting, relaxation, focusing techniques and visualization. This will help them deal with pressure, stay focused and stay motivated during training and competition and to be more confident. He believes that the coach has a central part in the training of an athlete. He always looks for a way to use the input from the coach and will provide the coach with input also from the mental training program.

Frank has been working for about eight years as a sports psychologist. In that time he has worked with top athletes from many different sports such as rowing, boxing, judo, basketball, handball and of course squash. In addition he teaches at various coach education programs such as for the Dutch Basketball Association and also gives lectures about sports psychology at different universities.

He has been an important part of Nicol David’s success in 2010.

Through his mental training program Nicol enjoyed her best ever year by remaining undefeated in every competition she entered.

Maurice Berghout (Netherlands) Physiotherapist

Maurice is twenty six years old and an active sportsman, involved in cycling, mountain biking, squash and fitness.

He runs the Kirchhoff Physiotherapy Practice at Squash City. He was educated in physiotherapy at the Utrecht University and has a number of specialities including sports injuries (strain complaints), rehabilitation after surgery, fracture and trauma. This can include complex and long lasting conditions such as whiplash, RSI, lower back, groin and Achilles tendon complaints.

He uses these areas of knowledge and experience also for injury prevention, deep sports massage and recovery massage. He also has a strong base knowledge in core stability. Physiotherapy in The

Netherlands is very hands on without using machines and with personal attention and time well spent on each athlete.

Maurice is available daily for the athletes so they are never far from help if it is needed.

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