BA (Hons) Physical Education – Starts October ’22

“I very much took the scenic route to education.”

Anthony Sheriff isn’t joking. After leaving school in Ireland, he spent a year in Australia before returning to Ireland before then going to college in Liverpool. From there he found his way to different cities in the United Kingdom before spending two years as a teacher in Dubai.

Travelling the world may or may not have been a goal for Anthony that he was always aware of but it definitely would have been a surprise to his younger self that he was travelling as a teacher.

“When I was a teenager absolutely I was sports mad. Right back as far as I can remember as a child, my mam always says that I was kicking a football before I could walk. You’d probably struggle to find a sport that I haven’t played or competed in at one stage.

I was never the academic type. I was never the type to be massively interested in school apart from PE. When I was in school all I wanted to do was to be out playing sport really. It’s not that I hated school, I got the work done that had to be done but I think my mind was just on sport the whole time so I was never massively interested.”

Initially after leaving school, Anthony worked in different jobs. He was a greenkeeper, worked in a bar and in construction. He moved to Australia for a year on a whim when his friend asked him if he wanted to go.

Anthony openly admits that he didn’t know what he wanted to do at that stage of his life.

College didn’t become an option for him until he was 22 years of age after leaving secondary school at 18. It was all that time he spent on building sites in Australia that made him realize what he really wanted to pursue in life.

“I was doing a lot of these labouring jobs and it was a bit of craic and all on the site, it was enjoyable at times but I realized it wasn’t what I wanted to do long term. That’s when I started to have a deep think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”

Since PE was the only thing he had any care for during his time in school, Anthony began searching through online courses to see what qualification he could actually earn and what career he could build. That led him to Liverpool John Moores University in England.

Once he started studying in Liverpool, Anthony no longer had to figure out what he wanted to do. His career outlined itself in front of him.

“Liverpool was where the opportunity was…an absolutely excellent college. It’s just a fantastic place. The tutors the way they worked with us so closely because going into it I was worrying you’d be going into a class of 100 people the way you see college on television and there’s these big lecture halls. It’s very impersonal.

But that wasn’t the experience at all. They focus on each individual. They’re just very, very helpful and the course they put on was excellent.”

After finishing his degree at LJMU, Anthony became a qualified PE teacher in England and earned his master’s degree in Sports and Exercise Psychology. Working in Manchester and studying in Leeds after going to college in Liverpool, Anthony was able to broaden his connections within the sports industry.

Since then he has worked with top level athletes to help them in sports psychology while also starting his own podcast that features some big names across different sports.

The balance between his two areas of expertise, sports psychology and teaching, have helped Anthony to become a very approachable tutor who encourages discussions in lectures to maximize the time he has with his students.

“I believe strongly in working together with the students n my class and will always encourage students to share their opinions to help create interesting discussions. I am also a strong believer in reflective practice and believe that this approach will allow me to improve continuously which will then maximize the student’s potential to achieve their goals.”

The broad nature of Anthony’s skill set and the fact that he has worked internationally in different roles at high levels made him an appealing tutor for Portobello Institute.

Our students continually benefit from his ability to connect with the individual and understand their needs.

“I’m used to working with children, teenagers, adults, whatever it may be. But also when I see students coming in and they’re studying PE, I can better understand them because I’ve taken the scenic route.

A lot of people come in straight from school, straight to college and then back into a classroom teaching whereas I very much didn’t do that. I know what it’s like to finish school and not really have a clue about what you want to do.

I’m one of those people who did every job in the world and I found out what I didn’t want to do before I found out what I did want to do. That’s definitely helped me understand students coming from different areas of life.”

Barry Roe started out his career in what he calls one of the big three (Business, Medicine, Law).

“Nobody ever really entertained the possibility of a real career in sports, even though there were a lot of serious athletes involved, people who were hugely successful in their sporting lives, got scholarships and everything. They never took sport seriously in terms of seeing it as an actual career path.”

He landed that coveted corner office in a tall building managing pension funds. Barry had what most would consider a perk. His office literally overlooked the Leinster training ground. If Leinster scored a try off a set piece move on Friday night, Barry had seen it happen on Tuesday. He knew who the next superstar talent was and got to watch him everyday.

But that’s not what Barry wanted. Instead of a perk, it was only adding to his misery in his office job.

“It was only my wife really who sat me down and said ‘Look you’re obviously miserable.’

Having studied something like business and marketing, it was a great experience…but if I could go back I would definitely have just gone through the sporting route. If I could talk to my teenage self I would say what do you actually really like to do and what would you like to do with the rest of your life as opposed to what do you think you should be doing.

Forget what you think you should be doing, just go do what you like to do and you’ll succeed in it. You’ll make more successful leaps and bounds far quicker than you would slogging it out during a recession in finance.”

With a very understanding wife at his side, Barry gave up his career in finance and became a personal trainer. He earned his MSc Sports Performance from the University of Limerick before becoming a strength and conditioning coach and nutrition advisor for Munster Rugby.

“When you’re sitting there thinking ‘I’m here working in pension funds until I potentially start drawing my own pension.’ Nah, that was not happening. No. Game over.”

Having worked with elite athletes and having set up his own personal training business, Barry then sought out to satiate his desire to educate. That’s how he wound up at Portobello Institute.

“My philosophy is to always be open to new challenges and opportunities. In doing so, I feel that I will maintain a fresh perspective and continue to grow professionally and personally. My goal as an educator in the undergraduate program is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to become professionally competent in their chosen pathways.

My teaching philosophy takes a student-centric approach. I strive to create a collaborative and interactive learning environment; one that allows our diverse student body to share their own unique experiences and perspectives. My overall aim is to equip my students with the skills and confidence to make a seamless transition from their academic studies into their chosen careers.”

Becoming an educator was a natural fit for Barry as he has continually sought out education himself as a student. His initial degree in marketing wasn’t ultimately what he wanted to build his career in but it didn’t mar his passion for education. Since then he has earned his Masters from UL but also completed the National Qualifications in Suspension Training, Pre & Post Natal Exercise, Indoor Cycling and Kettlebell Training and further qualifications with the IRFU, U.K. Anti Doping, ISAK and Les Mills.

Emma McLoughlin is a Portobello Institute lecturer who worked in psychology away from sports before moving into sports education. Cathal Brady was a Portobello student before becoming a lecturer. Barry Roe underwent a late career change to become a sports lecturer.

Alan Whelan?

Alan Whelan did all three.

“The big thing for me is I put off going back to full-time education. I sat in a job for six years, six out of 10 years that I knew I didn’t like it…I put off for years making that jump. And that’s always something I say to a lot of people, just go and chase what you want to do.

Even if it’s a mistake you won’t regret it.”

It wasn’t a mistake for Alan. He was 36 years of age when he first walked through the doors at Portobello Institute. Fearing that he would be the oldest student in the class, he’s familiar with how mature students feel when they now walk into his lectures.

Fortunately for Alan, his class was diverse and he wasn’t even the oldest student in the class. He almost proudly noted that another student was six months older than him.

Many of our sports students come back to education later in life because they weren’t pushed towards a career in sports when they left school. Despite being an intelligent student and a sports-obsessed teenager, the adults in Alan’s life guided him towards a more traditional college and career choice.

Real estate and corporate finance made up most of Alan’s next 18 years.

The day-to-day monotony of going into school to study subjects he had no interest in was replaced by the day-to-day monotony of going into an office and doing the same work over and over again.

“That mundane 9-5, sitting in a desk in front of a computer in that kind of corporate world was just killing me. It was boredom, it was monotonous. It was the same thing day in day out with little gratitude.

It was my wife who pushed me. She said ‘Look, you’re clearly not happy. Go and take the risk and do it’…I completely packed in my job, I was a couple months shy of 10 years working there.”

Had Alan reached the 10-year milestone, he could have earned an extra five days off each year. That was the only thing driving him to stay in work, the opportunity to get out of work. Instead of getting that five days off, he took three years off and studied the Sports Science and Physical Education degree at Portobello Institute.

“When I gave up my full-time job, I had a little bit of savings behind me. My idea was I was going to completely stop working and I was going to focus on year one of the degree, then with the potential of getting some part-time work in year two and three to help.

But I actually ended up not working for the entire three years.

I remember I used to say to people ‘I have never been so broke in my entire life but I’ve never been as happy as I am now.’”

That happiness extended further when Alan travelled up to the University of Ulster in Belfast to do his master’s in sports psychology.

Dr. Susan Giblin had noticed Alan’s enthusiasm for his education in sports. She also noticed how impressive his dissertation was before offering him the opportunity to become a lecturer at Portobello. Alan took all of five seconds to realize it was a great idea.

“I’m enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. It’s more freedom [compared to my previous jobs]…Now I’m working in Portobello and I set up my own psychology business last February.

It’s night and day the difference, particularly in relation to my own happiness.”

Having followed the path from uninterested secondary school student to college dropout to staying in the wrong career for more than 10 years, Alan can empathize with all of his students. Those students who have experienced that office depression can listen to him outline what his job is now and where he works.

He is no longer chained to an office for eight hours a day. Instead, he can work from home, can work in a sports hall, a classroom, on a field, in a locker room or, if he suddenly gets the urge, he can go and work in an office.

But working in an office would now be a choice he makes rather than something he does out of necessity.

That is because of the education he received at Portobello Institute and the decisions he made to take risks in pursuit of what he wanted.

Alan himself notes that he’s a happier person now, which makes him a more effective lecturer. He loves engaging his students and guiding them towards where they want to go.

“I am a very open and approachable tutor. I believe in a student-centred approach to learning, with student engagement and discussion at the heart of every lecture.

A firm believer in the benefits of effective goal setting, engaging in reflective practice and practical application, I employ a number of sport psychology related skills into the education setting to ensure all students maximize their potential for learning.”

During the final weeks of the Portobello school year, Colm Murphy is frenetically keeping track of his students and handing out grades. It’s an incredibly busy time of year after which anyone would want to take a long break.

But Colm doesn’t go and sit on a beach somewhere. Instead, he dives straight into summer camps for the children at his local tennis club.

“The youngest ones are five. It’s mostly aimed at primary schools so a few of them are 11 and 12. We split them into smaller groups within that but the smallest ones are really small. They’re very funny.”

You can sense the delight from Colm as he talks through the fun of coaching kids.

Even on this unseasonably stormy summer day where the sessions were disrupted more than once, you can sense his enthusiasm and passion. The energy he radiates personifies that delight that only comes from someone who is fully enjoying his day-to-day activities.

Colm had always wanted to be a PE teacher and a coach of some kind. There’s no doubt that he’s living out his dream but that alone isn’t enough to explain him being so content with life.

That kind of happiness comes from someone who has endured a winding and often disrupted journey to where he wanted to be.

“In school it was all about the sport and not about the study. I came to study very late in the day. At the time the only thing I wanted was to become a PE teacher but the academic requirements for that were way out of my reach.

I certainly didn’t regard myself as any kind of student or certainly not an academic. I was enjoying sport far too much to actually apply myself to my studies.”

Needing to get a proper job, Colm forewent college and went to work straight away.

Instead of PE and coaching, he spent his days in a bank. After working his way up through entry level jobs to land in the finance department, Colm was pushed towards doing accountancy exams. A proper job.

“I was trying to basically hammer a square peg into a round hole. It didn’t want to go…I had to stop at the certificate stage, I couldn’t force myself over the line no matter how valuable it would be. I was just completely sick of it at that point.”

Having not found his fit in the bank, Colm departed to an IT Software company. He was closer to what he wanted to be here, filling a position of leadership in quality control and project management. But it still wasn’t PE or Coaching.

While it didn’t feel like it at the time, Colm was very fortunate to be forced away from that career after a couple of years.

“The dotcom bubble burst in 2002 and the company I was with just shrank and shrank and shrank…eventually [my boss] called me into the room and said ‘I have a new list [to let go] and you’re on it.'”

There were no opportunities in the sector. That forced Colm to look elsewhere, which led him back to the tennis coaching qualification that he had earned in his youth.

“Funnily, I really started to enjoy it hugely, really quickly. And I actually got quite busy really quickly as well…this was an enforced change that I wouldn’t have chosen but it was kind of opportune as well. So what else could I do? What else would I like? What else would fit with this?”

At 35 years of age with two kids and a mortgage, Colm couldn’t go back into a 9-5 college education to become a physiotherapist. He instead found a Blended Learning course that could fit into his established life that allowed him to become a qualified physical therapist.

Despite never being a good student in his youth, Colm impressed so much on his course that the Institute of Physical Therapy and Applied Science offered him an opportunity to become a lecturer.

He carried out that role while still coaching and working as a therapist himself for more than 10 years before Portobello Institute came calling.

Colm has been demystifying the course material for Portobello students for five years now. He’s an energetic lecturer with a positive outlook that helps students to build their confidence and knowledge so they can overcome the challenges they have set for themselves.

But more than just putting on a show and celebrating their development, Colm’s journey allows him to empathise with his students on a professional and personal level. Especially the mature students.

“I find the mature students to be really interesting. I suppose it’s because my pathway has been unconventional and a lot of them are in the same boat…You look back at some crunch times in your journey and you wonder how you managed to get through it.

I often end up having that conversation or conversations like that with mature students.

You say, ‘Look there are gonna be bumps in the road here. You mightn’t know yet what they are but they’re gonna pop up and you need to be prepared for the fact they’re gonna pop up. If it does pop up, come and talk to me because chances are whether it’s me or Cathal [Brady] or Barry [Roe] we’re going to have had a similar experience.’”

When Colm was a mature student, he and his wife were both working and studying while taking care of their two children. They had a third child during those years and each of them felt the heartbreak of losing a parent.

So even though students now get to work with an incredibly enthusiastic and positive lecturer who can put on a show in the classroom, the person behind that lecturer also has all the experience to empathize and understand their needs.

Qualifications

•  MSc Applied Sport & Exercise Psychology (Waterford IT)
• Post Grad Certificate in Third Level Teaching & Learning (DIT)
• Diploma in Physical Therapy (IPTAS)
• Tennis Ireland Development Coach (Tennis Ireland)

Research / Industry Participation

• Anatomy & Analysis Tutor for 11 years with IPTAS (Institute of Physical Therapy & Applied Science). 2006 – 2017
• Physical Therapist in private practice since 2006
• Tennis Ireland Development Coach since 1994
• Sport Performance Coach since 2015