Alternative Routes to College Degrees and Careers in Sports For Leaving Cert Students

Missing out on your college course because of CAO points won't prevent you from going to college.

College is an important part of life. Even if you didn't get your first choice course, you can find alternatives that offer you the same opportunities and will let you build the same career/life that you dreamed of building.

A huge number of people don't get the CAO points they needed or the first choice course that they wanted. They still go on to enjoy successful careers and happy lives through other avenues.

Oftentimes, those avenues are actually better than the ones they were initially pursuing.

Portobello Institute's degree courses do not require students to meet specific CAO point requirements.

Students have found happiness at Portobello by applying directly to the college and then benefiting from the smaller class sizes, the flexible scheduling and the broader options that come from three-year, rather than four-year degree courses.

In the Sports department, we have four primary career paths that you can follow:

• Sports Therapy
• PE Teacher
• Professional Coach
• Professional Sports Analyst

Sports Therapy

Sports Therapy is a growing industry in Ireland. It has previously been more popular in America and the United Kingdom but the continuous growth of sports as a collective industry has led to a greater need for sports therapists.

This is Portobello's most popular sports course.

The reason for that is the variety of opportunities that it offers to graduates. Those who want to immediately set up sports therapy clinics are able to do so. But those Leaving Cert students who didn't get their CAO points for physiotherapy have found it can be used as an alternative route to the career they want.

In fact, it can actually be a better choice and some students have chosen the Sports Therapy route despite getting the CAO points for physiotherapy.

This is because Portobello's BSc (Hons) Sports Therapy degree only takes three years and has condensed scheduling. This allows students to get to their master's degree earlier, which means they can eventually start working earlier.

Using the Sports Therapy course as a stepping stone into future education opportunities is a really smart choice for those set on becoming physiotherapists.

For those who don't want to become physiotherapists, there are a wide range of job opportunities that can be attained through Sports Therapy:

• Athletic Therapist
• Hydrotherapist
• Occupational Therapist
• Physical Therapist
• Sports Massage Therapist
• Sports Rehabilitator
• Sports Therapist

PE Teacher

As recently highlighted by Anna Geary's documentary 'Why Girls Quit Sport' on RTE, Ireland has a major health crisis when it comes to young people.

Sedentary lifestyles for children are leading to chronic injuries and illnesses later in life that are shortening lifespans of people who live at a time when medicine has never been more effective.

Part of the solution is the revamped Physical Education curriculum that the government have undertaken over recent years.

Incoming fifth year students this year should all have the opportunity to study PE as a Leaving Certificate subject.

That's the theory.

But for that to actually happen, the country has to have enough qualified PE teachers available to fill the supply demand. For Leaving Cert students who want to become PE teachers and get in on the ground of a promising career path, Portobello has two courses:

• BSc (Hons) Psychology, Coaching and PE
• BA (Hons) Physical Education

There are distinct differences between coaching professional sports and being a PE teacher. While being educated in one doesn't mean you can do the other, there are conceptual lines that cross over to create similarities.

As such, Portobello has combined coaching and PE modules so that our graduates are qualified to work both in sports at the highest levels and as PE teachers once they've applied for a professional master's in education for PE.

Famously, Stuart Lancaster did both.

“My 10 years as a PE teacher were really formative on shaping my mindset on sport in general.”

The head coach of Leinster rugby and the former head coach of England rugby spoke to Nathan Murphy of Off The Ball earlier this year. Lancaster perfectly outlined how PE is about inspiring children to live better lives past school and how professional coaching is about taking those principles but with a narrower focus to create specialized experts.

Not everyone needs or wants to follow Lancaster's path, but it is an option through these degrees.

Portobello Institute is leading the way in treating PE teacher qualifications with the seriousness that they deserve.

Professional Coach

The easiest way to become a professional coach in any sport is to be a former professional athlete.

Unfortunately, that route is only available to the top 1% of the top 1% who not only become elite athletes but excel to the point that that they are famous for it. Paul O'Connell became Ireland's forwards coach this year for example.

Most coaches don't follow that path. Most of the successful coaches at the highest level weren't superstar players.

The recent failings of Frank Lampard, Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso highlight how being a superstar player doesn't necessarily mean you'll be even an effective coach.

History is filled with examples of great managers who weren't great players. Those include Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Jurgen Klopp. It's not just the historically good managers either. Current examples include Thomas Tuechel and Brendan Rodgers.

Portobello Institute offers three different courses that are ideal for students hoping to work in coaching:

• BSc (Hons) Sports Science and Performance Analysis
• BSc (Hons) Sports Psychology, Coaching and PE

Not all coaching is sports specific. Personal training is becoming more popular than ever before, probably because of Instagram.

Despite graduating from Portobello just three years ago, David Poff has already founded Donnybrook Performance. It’s his first studio where he works as the head trainer and owner. Poff studied Sports Science and is enthusiastic about just how helpful Portobello was, “The three-year degree in Portobello was really, really beneficial to me, especially going into the fitness side of things.”

In the age of the internet, thinking critically is vital for discerning facts from fiction. That was Poff’s biggest takeaway from the course, “Because in the fitness industry there’s a lot of misinformation and a lot of things that are put out there that are incorrect. Being able to evaluate and go into such detail with the course at Portobello gave me a great understanding on how to look at that information and see if it actually is correct.”

Coaching is no longer just about shouting at the top of your lungs and punishing players with laps. The Davy Fitz approach still has its place but there is nuance to performance. Setting players or clients up to reach their full potential requires an education on the body and how the body functions.

That education is available at Portobello Institute.

Professional Analyst

Jonah Hill portrayed Peter Brand in the movie Moneyball.

Peter Brand doesn’t exist though.

He was a character of fiction based on Paul DePodesta, a Harvard graduate in Economics who went on to work as a professional analyst in Major League Baseball and the National Football League. He never played at the highest level in any sport, but he worked at the highest level because of his education outside of sports.

DePodesta graduated in 1995. Since then, and not necessarily by coincidence, specialized education for sports analysis has continued to develop across the world.

Now Portobello has specialized courses for those hoping to become sports analysts:

• BSc (Hons) Sports Science and Performance Analysis
• MSc Sports Performance Analysis

Within one year of graduating from Portobello in 2017, Eoin Byrne was working for RTE in performance analysis. Eoin travelled the country collecting and analysing player performance data from GAA and soccer players. He understood how to do this after doing the same at Portobello and with a soccer team in Scotland for his final year dissertation.

Although a self-proclaimed proud GAA man, Eoin built up his repertoire of applied skills by working with both soccer and GAA teams in Ireland and the United Kingdom during his time at Portobello.

The versatility of Eoin’s degree allowed him to then become a producer at Eir Sport, covering major sports tournaments across the globe.

As sports continue to move further into the professional era, there are greater opportunities for sports analysis teams and outside entities who will employ analysts for different roles. Analytics have never been more prevalent so the need for qualified sports analysts has never been greater.

Portobello Institute values the one in everyone and understands that education is only a part of your life. We don’t want to take up all of your time and create stress for you. You should go to college to improve your life outside of college and after college.

We are training the sports professionals of the future. If you would like to work in sport in a professional capacity, you can find a course that will provide you with the requisite education to do so.

Our sports courses are listed here.

To read more articles like this one, you can visit the Sports section of the Knowledge Zone.

If you would prefer to have a direct conversation with Johanna, you can contact her on 01-892-0024 or you can email her at jo.shaw@portobelloinstitute.com. Meetings with Johanna can be booked through this link.

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Johanna Shaw has a 2:1 in BSc (Hons) in Sports and Exercise Science from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. She completed an MPhil Studentship in Physical Activity for Health alongside an Exercise Development role. She then went onto a Tackling Inactivity in Students role funded by Sport England within a Further Education College in London before moving back to Dublin to Portobello Institute.