To celebrate the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, SSE is providing additional support on top of its ‘Next Generation’ scheme that is already supporting young athletes across the UK including four from Northern Ireland.
As part of SSE's commitment towards the 'Next Generation' of Commonwealth Games home nation athletes, the company is supporting 50 athletes each year over the course of four years across Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The athletes being supported participate in a wide variety of different sports from boxing to hockey, and cycling to rugby.
Now, to celebrate the Glasgow 2014, SSE is providing more support than ever before. For the duration of the Games supporters of Team Northern Ireland are being encouraged to tweet messages of support using #GoNI to add to the region’s tweet tally. The home nation with the most hash-tagged tweets will receive funding for a further 25 up-and-coming athletes. The nation in second place will win funding for 10, while the third-placed nation will receive eight and the fourth will receive seven.
Josh Bradley from SSE Airtricity joined Richard Archibald from Sports Institute of Nothern Ireland and #GoTeamNI to launch this latest drive at the Dame Mary Peters Track to launch this latest initiative.
Explaining the company’s commitment to supporting future athletes, Josh said:
“At SSE we're supporting 50 young athletes a year to help them reach the top. For many budding athletes, the Commonwealth Games is often their first major Games and we at SSE and SSE Airtricity are all about building for the future with our SSE Next Generation programme.
“We've been getting behind a host of future stars, including four young athletes from Northern Ireland with a superb package of financial and developmental support. This package includes funding and mentoring to help them achieve their full sporting potential and help ensure a sporting legacy for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and well beyond into the future.
“The mentors helping the youngsters achieve their goals range from Sir Chris Hoy, the most successful Olympic athlete of all time with six gold medals and an 11-time world champion, to rising athletics star Katarina Johnson-Thompson.”
Northern Ireland’s SSE Next Generation Athletes:
Namphon Steele
Sport: Athletics
Discipline: Sprint (100m/200m)
Kurt Walker
Sport: Boxing
Norman Lau
Sport: Badminton
Morgan Berryman
Sport: Swimming