A Blackburn student will be supporting some of the world’s best athletes at this summer’s Paralympics after graduating from Liverpool Hope University with a first class degree in Physical Education (PE) and Special Educational Needs (SEN).
Kirsty Bean is heading to Paris 2024 as part of the technical team for Boccia, an indoor target-based sport similar to bowls and played by athletes in wheelchairs who have severe impairments that affect motor function.
In her role as Call Room Manager, Kirsty will be responsible for coordinating the logistics of the call room, where the Boccia referees will be checking whether athletes’ equipment has been tampered with as part of the anti-cheating system which ensures the integrity of the competition isn’t compromised.
It is a dream job for the sports-mad 21-year-old, who has become a major figure within Boccia in England since she began refereeing whilst still a pupil at Blackburn's St Bede’s High School. “It feels surreal to say I am going to be working at the Paralympics,” she said.
“It’s going to be really exciting to be in that environment of international sport and to experience the coordination of an event that I’ve watched for as long as I can remember.
“Boccia is a sport that is really important in my life and has shaped who I am. When I discovered Boccia and disability sports I found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and it’s nice to see that all the work I have put in for years in this sport has paid off.”
Having fallen in love with the sport after refereeing a primary school competition for the first time in 2016, Kirsty joined Blackburn Boccia Buddies, where she still coaches today.
Whilst at Liverpool Hope, she coached at Greenbank Giants Boccia and gained Level Two qualifications in refereeing and coaching.
Kirsty has made rapid progress in both disciplines. She has already officiated at the UK Championships and coached on the national talent development programme, which provided a pathway for her to enrol on the Boccia UK Advanced Coaching Programme where she is training to develop the next generation of elite athletes in the UK.
“Boccia is pretty much my whole life,” adds Kirsty, who undertakes all of these roles on a voluntary basis.
“I fell in love with it from the moment I first encountered it in school. I had never seen anything like it and I was fascinated by it so I found my local club in Blackburn and have been a coach there ever since.
“That was the first time I saw that sport could be more than sport. For the people that play Boccia it wasn’t just about winning, it was about what they learnt from it.
“We had children who weren’t included in PE at school and suddenly they had a sport which was teaching them team work and communication and giving them somewhere to socialise.”
Offering a combined PE and SEN degree, Liverpool Hope provided the perfect opportunity for Kirsty to pursue her passions.
Her final-year dissertation examined the challenges Boccia faces to raise its profile and her ambition is to continue to combine the sport with an academic career.
“I have always been interested in disability sport so I wanted to do a degree that facilitated that interest and Hope was one of the few places to offer an SEN course.
“It’s been interesting to see how you take two disciplines and push them together. I spent half my week with the disability studies team and half with the PE team, so I was able to look at how certain areas of sport aren’t particularly accessible and think about how we can change that.
“My next step is to do a masters and then hopefully a PhD. I want to use what I have learnt from coaching Boccia to make disability sport more prominent in academic literature.”