Louise Hunt Skelley PLY - Inclusive Sports

Our guest today is Louise Hunt Skelley PLY, a Paralympic wheelchair tennis athlete, who now has developed an exciting portfolio career. She is involved in a range of many different things, including commentary, tournament directing, consultancy, working with young people, and public speaking – all with a focus on disability, inclusion and sport.

Recently she has launched a new company, Enable Rise with another friend, Samantha Bullock, also a wheelchair tennis player. Louise talks about how their passion around inclusion in various areas made them realise they could join forces and work towards making everywhere inclusive. 

Having been involved in sport from a young age, Louise talks about how taking part in tennis helped her socialise and made her feel both powerful and capable. Later it gave her opportunities to travel the world and meet other amazing people.

She talks about how her involvement in sport has opened many, many doors in her life in terms of her own confidence, but also in terms of raising her profile.

Louise also talks about her passion for tennis, explaining why she loves this sport specifically.

We talk about the gender gap in sport when Louise’s passion is that sport is for everyone. She thinks that boys and girls should have access to the range of all sports at school, from a young age; for example, not only girls play netball and only boys play football.

Whilst talking about the challenges involved in making sports more inclusive, we discuss how in fact people playing disabled sport need to have much broader skill sets to be able to play at an elite level. And then go on to talk about how these skills can be transferred to the workplace.

Louise explains very clearly what inclusion means to her; everyone should have the same experience, but for wheelchair users and people with disabilities, some adjustments need to be made. Therefore, it’s about managing a situation, so you get to the same outcome and the same experience.

You can contact us at the following:

Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/
Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

You can contact Louise at:

Mobile: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Website: www.louisehunt.co.uk
Linked in: Louise Hunt Skelley PLY