Sport Technology – BSc (Honours)

At a glance

Learn why technology is important to the sport industry and turn that understanding into a career on this professionally-focused course. You have opportunities to gain first-hand experience in industry with a year-long placement and commercially led final-year project.

Key points
• Take advantage of industry-standard design suites and workshops.• Gain placements at renowned sports companies like Grays International.
• Work with industrial partners on live projects, from an initial brief to final design.
• Learn from experts such as Dr Tom Allen, a leading sports engineering researcher.

What is sports technology?
Sports technology applies the foundations of engineering and science to sport. The subject has a particular focus on the design and development of sports equipment.

Examples of sports equipment development include the design of sport and fitness equipment such as shoes, racquets, running blades and goal line technology systems.

This course

Develop your knowledge and understanding of sports technology, as well as the key analytical skills and personal qualities you need, for a successful career in this area. On this professionally focused course, you study everything from manufacturing and marketing a product to using suitable instrumentation to check product and athletic performance.

You learn to use computer-aided design to adapt existing products or create new designs. You also become skilled in selecting and using different materials, including composite materials, foams and plastics, and also learn how and why you use a particular material in different sport applications.

The course • highlights why it is important to use instruments to test performance
• examines ways in which you can measure the performance of athletes' and sport products
• emphasises computer-based measurement techniques

You gain an insight into the commercial application of sport technology with trips to equipment manufacturers such as Gunn & Moore, B3 Cricket, Mitre Sports and Echelon Sport.

You also benefit from international links with Victoria University, Australia and Chemnitz University, Germany and are able to take advantage of innovate teaching collaborations, such as a recent sports equipment design workshop.

After learning how to analyse designs and prototypes on course modules, you can then apply your studies in a professional environment with a year of supervised work experience. A work placement is valuable in focusing you for the final year and improving your employability after you graduate.

The reputation of this course is very good within industry and previous students have secured placements with sports equipment manufacturers such as Grays International and sports testing laboratories such as Labosport.

Our students often work on their final year individual projects in collaboration with sports companies. A recent example includes analysing the aerodynamics of footballs with Mitre Sports.

In the final year of the course you also complete a major team project, often with an industrial partner such as Gunn & Moore or B3 Cricket. This allows you to apply your engineering skills to a sports related problem of your choice. A recent example involved developing a wearable electronic device to detect 'chucking' in cricket (where a cricket bowler fouls by bending their elbow when bowling).

Our sports research was ranked fourth in the country (RAE 2008) in the latest official report and we ensure that you benefit from this excellence with cutting-edge course content and expert teaching.

The course is led by Dr Tom Allen, a sports engineering researcher who works closely with a number of major sports brands and governing bodies such as Prince, Ping, Mitre and the International Tennis Federation. Dr Allen is also the associate editor of Sports Engineering, the official journal of the International Sports Engineering Association.

Key areas of study
The course has four major themes • designing and developing sport products
• selecting and implementing sport materials
• sport instrumentation and data analysis
• sports mechanics - application of physics and mechanics to sport

Headstart course – sports engineering
We are running a headstart course in sports engineering for year 12 and S5 students. Headstart provides hands-on taster courses to help young people find out about about what exciting career opportunities a degree course might lead to. These exciting residential courses give you the chance to connect with professionals and technical specialists whilst developing essential skills like problem-solving and team work. Visit the EDT website for more information.